Transcript

Credlin | 21 May · Credlin

0:02
Speaker 1: Peedo Krandland live on Sky News Australia.
0:08
Speaker 2: Good evening, welcome to the program. Here's what's coming up tonight.
0:10
Speaker 2: On Credline, the fallout from the coalition split continues, finger
0:14
Speaker 2: pointing on both sides. But this isn't Susan Lee's only headache.
0:18
Speaker 2: She's announcing a shadow ministry tomorrow. More front benches than
0:22
Speaker 2: back benches. Now that the NAT's course have left, I'll
0:25
Speaker 2: get you an update on who's in and who's house
0:28
Speaker 2: in a moment. Meanwhile, Labour's campaign boss Paul Ericson addressed
0:31
Speaker 2: the National Press Club today and fair enough he's had
0:34
Speaker 2: an emphatic win. However, this was as much about wedging
0:37
Speaker 2: the opposition and rewriting history because we know it's the
0:41
Speaker 2: victor who holds the pen class. More exclusive footage from
0:45
Speaker 2: the upcoming documentary from our SAS troops, including amazing footage
0:50
Speaker 2: of their heroics in the Afghan village of tezak And.
0:54
Speaker 2: As is the case with any relationship breakdown, things get
0:58
Speaker 2: messy fast.
1:00
Speaker 3: Have we been given reasonable time we could have come
1:03
Speaker 3: to a mutually agreeable landing.
1:05
Speaker 4: Was the decision unanimous in the party room?
1:09
Speaker 5: It was it unanimous, but it was quite conclusive.
1:11
Speaker 2: Is this just a game of chicken?
1:13
Speaker 5: No, this is a matter of principle.
1:17
Speaker 2: But versus I said last night, just when you think
1:19
Speaker 2: things couldn't get worse for the coalition, or they have
1:22
Speaker 2: scarcely a fortnight after the Liberal National Coalition crashed to
1:26
Speaker 2: the worst defeat in its history. Not only is the
1:28
Speaker 2: coalition itself split, but there's also talk today that the
1:32
Speaker 2: Liberal Party leader has ruled out any reunification of the
1:35
Speaker 2: coalition this side of the next election. Now, what a
1:39
Speaker 2: sorry twenty four hours it's been for a political grouping
1:42
Speaker 2: that's run the country for fifty one of the past
1:46
Speaker 2: seventy six years. Already the blame game has started amongst
1:50
Speaker 2: the ill informed. Some have criticized the Nationals for leaving
1:54
Speaker 2: the negotiating table too soon, particularly given Susan Lee's bereavement.
2:00
Speaker 2: But it was Lee herself who set an arbitrary deadline
2:03
Speaker 2: to announce a shadow ministry on Thursday, and that, of
2:07
Speaker 2: course has impacted coalition negotiations. Now you've got to ask
2:12
Speaker 2: why the deadline. The only real deadline for Lee is
2:16
Speaker 2: the resumption of the parliament and that's not until July.
2:20
Speaker 2: So why the manufactured haste. Has everyone forgotten that after
2:24
Speaker 2: a loss, labor spends a month or so going through
2:28
Speaker 2: a whole convoluted election for a new leader and a ministry,
2:31
Speaker 2: and we all somehow cope with that. Yet the Liberals
2:35
Speaker 2: here couldn't wait another week or two to announce their
2:38
Speaker 2: front beach. Wouldn't it be mad if that haste has
2:41
Speaker 2: blown up the most successful political marriage in federal politics,
2:46
Speaker 2: especially as history shows that a strong coalition is a
2:49
Speaker 2: proven pathway out of opposition to victory and to stable government.
2:54
Speaker 2: Coalition negotiations always involve give and take. As I said
2:59
Speaker 2: last night, I know that because I have been a
3:01
Speaker 2: part of three of them. But both parties normally appreciate
3:05
Speaker 2: that you can't let in patience, in security, or greed
3:09
Speaker 2: for the paltry spoils of opposition derailed them, especially as
3:13
Speaker 2: neither party could realistically expect to win government on its own.
3:19
Speaker 2: The established Liberal Party president for policy post election is
3:23
Speaker 2: that everything stands unless it's changed. Now, that's been the
3:27
Speaker 2: practice for decades now until Susan Lee upended it all
3:32
Speaker 2: by declaring instead that nothing is adopted but nothing is abandoned.
3:37
Speaker 2: Even though no opposition can deal itself out of taking
3:40
Speaker 2: a position on the issues of the day for six
3:42
Speaker 2: months while they go through their policy introspection and naval gazing.
3:48
Speaker 2: When I was a Shadow Cabinet's secretary during the Avid
3:50
Speaker 2: opposition years, every single week legislation forced the then joint
3:54
Speaker 2: party room to arrive at policy positions without the luxury
3:58
Speaker 2: of a lengthy review. That's the nature of the Westminster system,
4:02
Speaker 2: and a ruthless Labor Party exploits this to wedge the
4:06
Speaker 2: other side. Throughout the Avid opposition years, we ran a
4:09
Speaker 2: parallel election review process because you must be able to
4:14
Speaker 2: respond intelligently to whatever comes up comes your way in opposition,
4:20
Speaker 2: as well as working up a coherent set of policies
4:23
Speaker 2: to take to the next election. Now, given the events
4:26
Speaker 2: of the last two days, there's got to be a
4:29
Speaker 2: strong suspicion here that the new Liberal leader is preparing
4:33
Speaker 2: to walk away from Dutton's pro nuclear policy, as the
4:37
Speaker 2: other three commitments that the Nats wanted were all specific
4:40
Speaker 2: and long standing to regional Australia. It's noteworthy that while
4:45
Speaker 2: the opposition leader's vision statement published on Monday reiterated her
4:50
Speaker 2: party's traditional commitments to low tax and strong national security,
4:54
Speaker 2: it was silent on energy by declaring that all the
4:58
Speaker 2: current policies, including nuclear, are in limbo. Lee's given all
5:03
Speaker 2: her colleagues a chance to re litigate every policy position,
5:09
Speaker 2: and that means will be arguments inside the opposition rather
5:12
Speaker 2: than the government's policy inadequacies being with a media focus.
5:18
Speaker 2: This is a mess for our country. It will now
5:21
Speaker 2: be much harder and the emission impossible for the Liberals
5:24
Speaker 2: to win in twenty twenty eight without a reformed coalition,
5:28
Speaker 2: and Lee today has ruled this out. There'll be three
5:32
Speaker 2: cornered contests across the country if anyone thought about that,
5:36
Speaker 2: There'll also be two sets of policies. They'll also likely
5:39
Speaker 2: be a donor's strike given how unhappy donors already are,
5:44
Speaker 2: and the electoral arithmetic is brutal. Without the Nationals and
5:49
Speaker 2: with Labour's historic ninety three seat majority, unless swiftly brought
5:54
Speaker 2: back together again, this rupture sets up the Liberals for
5:57
Speaker 2: three or more terms in the wilderness now. Multiple MPs
6:02
Speaker 2: have told me that one of Lee's pictures for the
6:04
Speaker 2: leadership was that she could give almost everybody a front
6:08
Speaker 2: bench job. This split will deliver that. Indeed, the Liberal
6:13
Speaker 2: Party will have more people in its shadow ministry on
6:15
Speaker 2: its front bench than on the back bench. What a joke,
6:19
Speaker 2: or with more salaries and extra staff. Is that what
6:23
Speaker 2: tipped it in Lee's favor. The National's readiness to walk
6:28
Speaker 2: away from all of these spoils of opposition at least
6:30
Speaker 2: validates their claim that theirs was a position of principle.
6:34
Speaker 2: Today's senior Liberals were calling for this break to be mended,
6:38
Speaker 2: and mended fast.
6:40
Speaker 6: The sooner we can do it, the better, because the
6:42
Speaker 6: longer this goes on, the harder it is then to
6:45
Speaker 6: bring it back together.
6:47
Speaker 7: So it's my ambition that we can solve this issue
6:50
Speaker 7: and reform the coalition in this term of parliament and
6:53
Speaker 7: go to the next Ilestip election as a joint coalition again,
6:56
Speaker 7: because it's not in the Liberal Party's interest for us
6:59
Speaker 7: to be fighting the Nation Party. We already have to
7:01
Speaker 7: fight at the Labor Party, the Greens and Appeals. We're
7:03
Speaker 7: not looking for any other political opponents.
7:07
Speaker 2: James Patterson's right there, but Lee has ruled that out,
7:10
Speaker 2: not before the next election, she says. And the longer
7:13
Speaker 2: the two main center right parties remain a part, the
7:16
Speaker 2: harder it will be to bring them back again. I
7:18
Speaker 2: mean policy positions will be taken, criticisms will be made,
7:22
Speaker 2: and those divisions will become entrenched, allowing him in the
7:25
Speaker 2: alb and easy to simply repeat Bob Hawke's line from
7:28
Speaker 2: the last time the Coalition slipped back in eighty seven.
7:32
Speaker 2: If you can't govern yourselves, you can't govern the country.
7:35
Speaker 2: The Liberals must be a modern party representing modern Australia,
7:40
Speaker 2: says Lee.
7:41
Speaker 8: We have to have a liberal party that respects modern Australia,
7:47
Speaker 8: that reflects modern Australia, and that represents modern Australia.
7:51
Speaker 2: Will modernize and we will rebuild modern Australia, Modern Liberals.
7:59
Speaker 2: That was our there on People's Call Flutes a couple
8:01
Speaker 2: of elections ago, and this now seems to be co
8:05
Speaker 2: for saying that the party lost the election because it
8:07
Speaker 2: was to right wing with a message that interurban liberals
8:12
Speaker 2: are the way to go, that the party must purge
8:15
Speaker 2: itself of conservative liberals, as well as reconsider nuclear power.
8:20
Speaker 2: But that would be a real misreading of the electorate
8:23
Speaker 2: and of global shifts in energy. Until earlier this year,
8:27
Speaker 2: the Dutton Opposition was riding high in the polls, even
8:30
Speaker 2: though it's only substantive policy on the table then was
8:33
Speaker 2: nuclear energy. It was only after Labor opened up its
8:36
Speaker 2: Medicare assault that this changed. Australians voting with the government
8:42
Speaker 2: to save medicare. Also they thought far more than they
8:45
Speaker 2: voted against the opposition because of nuclear power. Now, how
8:50
Speaker 2: can support for nuclear be hard right when it's the
8:54
Speaker 2: policy of the British Labor Party, the US Democratic Party,
8:58
Speaker 2: and with Germany also rethinking its previous opposition. At the
9:02
Speaker 2: same time, we've got Canada's new left wing prime minister
9:05
Speaker 2: declaring he'll use oil and gas to remake Canada as
9:10
Speaker 2: an energy superpower.
9:12
Speaker 9: When I talk about being an energy superpower, I always
9:16
Speaker 9: say in both clean and conventional energies.
9:18
Speaker 7: So what does that mean?
9:19
Speaker 9: Yes, it does mean oil and gas.
9:23
Speaker 2: Now it's no surprise. In his speech to the National
9:25
Speaker 2: Press Club today, Labour's campaign boss Paul Erickson said the
9:28
Speaker 2: party's embrace of renewables was key to Labour's success in.
9:34
Speaker 10: The decade before twenty twenty two, Australia's policy settings barely
9:38
Speaker 10: acknowledged climate change and there was no plan for keeping
9:41
Speaker 10: the lights on.
9:43
Speaker 2: Now we are.
9:44
Speaker 10: Taking advantage of the opportunities created by the global shift renewables.
9:50
Speaker 2: Now, of course, He would say that because it drives
9:52
Speaker 2: a wedge through his opponents, even though the reality is
9:55
Speaker 2: that Labor had to put Chris Bowen in the freezer
9:57
Speaker 2: for the entire campaign because he's so deeply unpopulate. They
10:01
Speaker 2: buried their twenty thirty five emissions targets for fear of
10:05
Speaker 2: spooking voters, and they were then forced to spend billions
10:08
Speaker 2: of dollars on household subsidies to buy support. So potent
10:13
Speaker 2: was electricity price pain. The tragedy for the Liberals is
10:17
Speaker 2: not that they had a nuclear power policy, it's that
10:20
Speaker 2: they never fought hard enough for it. Free from the
10:25
Speaker 2: more conservative ballast the Nationals have provided in the past,
10:28
Speaker 2: the Liberals now could simply me too, Labour's renewables only
10:33
Speaker 2: energy plan, and that's certainly the push from New South
10:36
Speaker 2: Wales's factional players, who have significant commercial interests in renewables.
10:42
Speaker 2: If the Liberals now caved in to cashed up renewable
10:46
Speaker 2: industry puppet masters, this will become an existential crisis. After all,
10:52
Speaker 2: one of the main factors behind the demise of the
10:56
Speaker 2: United Australia Party, and this was the Conservative Party before
10:59
Speaker 2: the Lebels were established, was its dependence on funding from
11:04
Speaker 2: shadow financiers. It was to defeat this that Robert Menzies
11:09
Speaker 2: set up a Liberal Party that, at least back then,
11:11
Speaker 2: was actually responsible to the membership. Whatever happens, rarely has
11:17
Speaker 2: Menzi's dictum been more fully born out. That defeat disunites
11:23
Speaker 2: the defeated. All right, let's go to Camber now for
11:29
Speaker 2: the headlines with Skyny's political reporter Trinty Macintosh.
11:33
Speaker 11: One day on from the coalition implosion. The Nationals leader
11:38
Speaker 11: is defiant.
11:39
Speaker 2: Is this just a game of chicken?
11:40
Speaker 9: No, this is a matter of principle.
11:42
Speaker 11: That principle forcing the Liberals to agree to four key
11:45
Speaker 11: policy areas, including nuclear and supermarket powers. New leader Susan
11:51
Speaker 11: Lee stood her ground, insisting everything is under a view.
11:55
Speaker 9: I respect that the Liberal Party wanted to go through
11:58
Speaker 9: a process of their own, but the National Party should
12:01
Speaker 9: not have to walk away from what would change the
12:04
Speaker 9: lives of the people we represent.
12:06
Speaker 11: Senior Liberals believe the Nationals demands were unreasonable.
12:09
Speaker 8: It is an important part of a post election after
12:13
Speaker 8: a loss in an election to reflect on what worked
12:16
Speaker 8: and what didn't. Surely there isn't everything that was in
12:19
Speaker 8: the National Party's agenda that they only worked one hundred percent.
12:22
Speaker 11: David Little Proud also wanted the freedom for his shadow
12:25
Speaker 11: ministers to vote against a Greek positions.
12:28
Speaker 3: You cannot offer stable government to the people of Australia
12:31
Speaker 3: if you're having ala carte shadow cabinet responsibility where you
12:34
Speaker 3: get to pick and choose which decisions of the shadow
12:37
Speaker 3: cabinet you are bound by or not bound by.
12:39
Speaker 11: Anthony Alberinezi back from Rome and in the press club
12:42
Speaker 11: for the Labor Party bosses post election address.
12:46
Speaker 10: There will be all sorts of drama. We need to
12:50
Speaker 10: stay focused on the voters who are elected us.
12:52
Speaker 11: Paul Erickson helped steer Labor to back to back victory
12:55
Speaker 11: and had this message for his opponents for.
12:58
Speaker 10: The Liberal Party, I say elections are one when you
13:01
Speaker 10: learn the lessons from your defeats and escape the echo
13:04
Speaker 10: chambers on your own side. Whether they can do that
13:07
Speaker 10: is a question for them, but they should start by
13:09
Speaker 10: abandoning a nuclear energy scheme.
13:14
Speaker 2: Lots to get across today. Joining me now Senior reporter
13:16
Speaker 2: Carolyn Marcus and senior political report about a Canberra Tritty
13:19
Speaker 2: Macintosh Trudy. We'll start with the fallout from the coalition
13:23
Speaker 2: and the PM of course, returning from his trip overseas,
13:26
Speaker 2: he addressed what this will mean in fact, in practical
13:29
Speaker 2: terms regarding resources for the two parties today haven't listened.
13:34
Speaker 4: It is not reasonable that there be more staff or
13:41
Speaker 4: a reward if you like, for the fact that you have.
13:44
Speaker 4: This division has occurred, so we'll get consideration to it
13:48
Speaker 4: and I'll have discussions with But Susan Bligh and David
13:55
Speaker 4: a little proud about that.
13:59
Speaker 2: I will say, though he's quite happy to give the
14:01
Speaker 2: tears and now there's additional staff or has in the past.
14:03
Speaker 2: I don't know what he'll be doing in this parliament.
14:05
Speaker 2: He doesn't need them as much. But I thought it's
14:08
Speaker 2: a it's a damning indictment on the Libs that they're
14:10
Speaker 2: going to have more people sitting on their front bench Trudy,
14:13
Speaker 2: than they will on their back bench. And apparently according
14:16
Speaker 2: to Libs I spoke with today, that part of Susan
14:20
Speaker 2: Lee's pitch for the leadership was vote for me and
14:23
Speaker 2: I'll give you a job.
14:27
Speaker 11: This is going to be fascinating to see how this
14:28
Speaker 11: shakes out. We're expecting the new look only Liberal shadow
14:32
Speaker 11: ministry to be announced either tomorrow afternoon is my mail
14:35
Speaker 11: or Friday morning if things get delayed. There are moving
14:38
Speaker 11: pieces here, and there hasn't really been any big leaks
14:41
Speaker 11: as to who is going to hold the key portfolios.
14:43
Speaker 11: We don't know who's going to be shadow treasurer, for example.
14:46
Speaker 11: The deputy gets to choose his position, Teed O'Brien, but
14:49
Speaker 11: so far publicly has been unwilling to countenance whether that's
14:52
Speaker 11: the job he wants or was that promise to someone
14:54
Speaker 11: else as a part of Susan Lee actually shoring up
14:57
Speaker 11: her own numbers. The question mark to me is what
14:59
Speaker 11: happens to us Taylor. He has not spoken publicly as
15:02
Speaker 11: far as I can tell, since losing that leadership race
15:05
Speaker 11: against Susan Lee. Is he given something that looks like
15:09
Speaker 11: an equal job or is he given something that's essentially
15:13
Speaker 11: what Anthony Albanezi did detain in plibusseec a bit of punishment.
15:16
Speaker 2: So I think that'll be fascinating.
15:18
Speaker 11: The numbers are just so tightly balanced in the Liberal
15:21
Speaker 11: party room at the moment, so I think Susan Lee
15:23
Speaker 11: will have that in mind when she allocates these portfolios.
15:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, just on that point, truly, I mean something like
15:30
Speaker 2: foreign affairs of defense. They sound like important portfolios, and
15:33
Speaker 2: they are in government. They're not that important in our position,
15:37
Speaker 2: but they have a certain cachet that could be where
15:39
Speaker 2: some of these people go. But interestingly, the people I
15:43
Speaker 2: spoke to today, most of them think that this is
15:46
Speaker 2: possibly the worst of all worlds and they want to
15:49
Speaker 2: run a mile. I mean, they will probably be prevailed
15:51
Speaker 2: upon to take a job, but they'd rather not because
15:54
Speaker 2: they think this is a sinking ship and going down
15:57
Speaker 2: fast and hasn't even been announced yet. What an absolute mess.
16:02
Speaker 11: And we were talking about it earlier town air with
16:04
Speaker 11: Kieran Gilbert. Whether there is some creative solution where you
16:07
Speaker 11: give someone two portfolios in essence hedging for a world
16:12
Speaker 11: in which the coalition reforms and then you then have
16:14
Speaker 11: to give the Nationals portfolios back. Susan Lee said when
16:17
Speaker 11: she was asked that she wasn't going to be telling
16:19
Speaker 11: people you are in line to be the motor now
16:22
Speaker 11: that obviously would be pretty difficult to do. So whether
16:25
Speaker 11: there is a workaround where you could give someone two
16:27
Speaker 11: portfolios with the knowledge that one would go to the NATS.
16:30
Speaker 2: What an absolute mess.
16:31
Speaker 11: This has been a rather spectacular week in federal politics.
16:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought of that, truly. I thought that's the
16:38
Speaker 2: way you do it, to give them something like trade
16:42
Speaker 2: and industry, let's say trade traditionally being National Party, or
16:45
Speaker 2: agriculture and industry. But then you've still got the complication.
16:49
Speaker 2: If you max out your thirty spots in the shadow ministry,
16:52
Speaker 2: you haven't got any additional spots. You'd have to take
16:54
Speaker 2: an individual out and put an individual in. It isn't
16:56
Speaker 2: just carving up the portfolios. And of course you'll get
16:59
Speaker 2: cranky if you don't have all of those positions fielled
17:03
Speaker 2: fingers crossed, hoping that the NATS might turn up. I
17:05
Speaker 2: think it's extraordinary, and I also think what's interesting to
17:08
Speaker 2: Caroline are her comments today that she doesn't see this
17:13
Speaker 2: being reformed before the next election. I think that's a mess.
17:17
Speaker 2: And then you've got what happened or what played out
17:19
Speaker 2: this morning on Breakfast TV, where it's not just a
17:25
Speaker 2: bit of a trial separation, it looks and sounds like
17:28
Speaker 2: a divorce.
17:29
Speaker 12: Have a look at this, so get this, We asked
17:33
Speaker 12: Deputy Liberally to Ted O'Brien on the show last night.
17:36
Speaker 12: He agreed. This morning, at a courtesy we told him
17:40
Speaker 12: Matt Canavan was coming on too. All seems okay, and
17:43
Speaker 12: then twenty minutes ago his team rang saying he won't
17:47
Speaker 12: come on with Canada. I mean, you can't make it up.
17:50
Speaker 12: It's like Maths the Canberra Edition.
17:54
Speaker 2: It's not often this stuff gets made public. You know,
17:56
Speaker 2: we have these same conversations as you know, Caroline. We
17:59
Speaker 2: get told a whole lot of stuff before people come
18:01
Speaker 2: on air, but it's not often that's made public. But
18:03
Speaker 2: it was this morning.
18:12
Speaker 13: That would leave the producers and the whost struggling in
18:16
Speaker 13: that spot, which traditionally they'd have two people on. They'd
18:20
Speaker 13: plan to have Matt Canevan and ted O Brian and
18:22
Speaker 13: now they're going to have to fill that spot with
18:25
Speaker 13: just one person. So I mean that's why Carl's upset
18:29
Speaker 13: about it. And occasionally these do things, these things sort
18:32
Speaker 13: of come out, and I think that's always the risk
18:34
Speaker 13: because it becomes the story and it overshadows anything that
18:38
Speaker 13: you were meant to discuss. I mean, it's kind of
18:41
Speaker 13: it is like a divorce in a way. It's like
18:43
Speaker 13: when you invite a divorced or separated couple to a
18:46
Speaker 13: family event and one person says, I'm not going if
18:49
Speaker 13: that person's going, and the other person says I'm not going,
18:52
Speaker 13: and it becomes this whole messy situation.
18:55
Speaker 2: So it doesn't look good.
18:57
Speaker 13: I mean Ted O'Brian, for his part, has come out
19:01
Speaker 13: and said, look, it wasn't how it appears. I've got
19:05
Speaker 13: no beef with Matt Canavan. My team's got mixed up,
19:09
Speaker 13: but it doesn't. And Matt Canavan said the same that
19:12
Speaker 13: they're actually mates. But it certainly doesn't appear that way.
19:16
Speaker 13: Not a good look at all, not.
19:18
Speaker 2: A good look at all. Let's go to the speech
19:20
Speaker 2: from Labor today. That was a good look if you're
19:22
Speaker 2: a Labor supporter, and rightly I think Paul Erickson should
19:26
Speaker 2: stand there and take about I mean, it was an
19:28
Speaker 2: extraordinary campaign. No one gave them any chance over Christmas
19:32
Speaker 2: to resurrect, not even resurrect for minority government or even
19:35
Speaker 2: a slim majority. But no one would have contemplated the
19:39
Speaker 2: numbers they've got now in the House. It's a record
19:42
Speaker 2: haul for Labor, greater than even Bob hawks Win, greater
19:45
Speaker 2: than Kevin oh seven. Ericson can ride his own ticket here. Speculation,
19:50
Speaker 2: though Truty, that it could go into the seat of
19:52
Speaker 2: Isaacs if Mark Dreyfus who's been dumped quits politics.
19:58
Speaker 11: That was a speculation last week. He was just about
20:00
Speaker 11: that today. I think he made the point he was
20:03
Speaker 11: asked by Tom Connell about by elections as he have
20:05
Speaker 11: an eye to them, and he said flat out no. Ultimately,
20:08
Speaker 11: though if he wants to, I'm sure he can be
20:11
Speaker 11: run in federal Parliament. But I thought he made a
20:13
Speaker 11: good point today about the actual vocation of working in
20:16
Speaker 11: a party head office. He's clearly done spectacularly well over
20:20
Speaker 11: the last decade in terms of rising up through the ranks.
20:23
Speaker 11: He's a very close confident on of Anthony Albanezi and
20:25
Speaker 11: rightfully so able to stand there today and talk about
20:29
Speaker 11: where it all went so well for Labor by comparison
20:32
Speaker 11: to Peter Dutton. A fascinating insight one we don't get
20:35
Speaker 11: to see very often as the public do we into
20:38
Speaker 11: how these have worked, What were the internal showing towards
20:41
Speaker 11: the end, great insight into how this played out.
20:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to pull that speech apart a bit
20:47
Speaker 2: later on because I think there were some telling insights
20:50
Speaker 2: in there for the Liberal Party in particular. But a
20:53
Speaker 2: messy couple of days of public transport across the country.
20:56
Speaker 2: Listen to this. You know, you go overseas and you
20:58
Speaker 2: go into state even you can swipe your debit card
21:01
Speaker 2: to get on and off a tram or a train.
21:03
Speaker 2: We're not so in Victoria, they've got this clunky old system.
21:06
Speaker 2: They've promised to replace it, well when our title cost
21:09
Speaker 2: another one hundred and forty million dollars just to do that,
21:13
Speaker 2: and they're eighteen months behind. And in Sydney you've had
21:17
Speaker 2: absolute chaos on the train system Caroline bad yesterday at
21:22
Speaker 2: Peka and extending again into today.
21:26
Speaker 13: Yeah, it's look massive delays, hundreds of people were left stranded,
21:31
Speaker 13: absolute chaos across the network and it was all because
21:35
Speaker 13: apparently this train's rooftop power connector had become tangled with
21:41
Speaker 13: overhead power lines in the city's in a West. The
21:45
Speaker 13: premiere came out Chrismins and said, look, the government takes
21:48
Speaker 13: full responsibility.
21:50
Speaker 2: This is our fall.
21:51
Speaker 13: We're going to give you a fair free day on
21:53
Speaker 13: Monday to compensate for putting people out. And they were
21:57
Speaker 13: at pains to make it clear that it was the
21:59
Speaker 13: guverment's bold and not the unions, because earlier in the
22:02
Speaker 13: year the unions had there had been all this industrial
22:06
Speaker 13: action and we'd had lots of delays then as well.
22:08
Speaker 13: But when you actually look at what happened because of
22:11
Speaker 13: that earlier industrial action, there were there was then a
22:16
Speaker 13: backlog in the maintenance schedule, and that seems to be
22:20
Speaker 13: partly to blame as well. Things weren't upgraded or maintained
22:24
Speaker 13: the levels that they should have been at this time.
22:26
Speaker 13: So I think that that that probably is partly to blame.
22:29
Speaker 13: And of course over in Victoria or what's happening there
22:33
Speaker 13: in your state with the transport system there behind a
22:37
Speaker 13: year and a half on this plan to modernize the
22:41
Speaker 13: system in line with most other places modern cities in
22:44
Speaker 13: the world, including here in Sydney where you can just
22:46
Speaker 13: tap your credit card on. It's going to cost another
22:48
Speaker 13: one hundred and forty million, as you say in other
22:50
Speaker 13: eighteen months behind, and it's all part of a broader
22:54
Speaker 13: problem with major projects there that the Allen government has
22:59
Speaker 13: just not budgeted properly for and have completely blown out
23:04
Speaker 13: in time.
23:07
Speaker 2: Can't run a thing. I have to say, thank you, ladies,
23:10
Speaker 2: see you both next week. Let's go back to the
23:12
Speaker 2: shop college and split And how more broadly this is
23:15
Speaker 2: reflecting a global trend with historic two party systems breaking
23:18
Speaker 2: down across the West, at least, so says my next
23:22
Speaker 2: guest foreign editor, Australian Greg Sheridan. Well, you've a really
23:26
Speaker 2: thoughtful piece today, Greg, that the liberal national parties are
23:28
Speaker 2: not immune to the sort of breakdowns we're seeing overseas.
23:33
Speaker 2: I'm interested to pull this apart. What do you think
23:36
Speaker 2: is driving this and here in Australia in particular, what
23:40
Speaker 2: do you think are the chances of reconciliation.
23:45
Speaker 5: Well, Peter, it's great to be with you. I think
23:49
Speaker 5: all over the West politics is in a half concealed crisis.
23:54
Speaker 5: Political systems are not any longer able to adjudicate difficult
23:58
Speaker 5: policy issues come up with us, put the solution of
24:01
Speaker 5: the people, get voted in, implement the policy and then
24:05
Speaker 5: see whether it works or not. And as a result,
24:07
Speaker 5: voters are getting more and more frustrated. You're seeing the
24:10
Speaker 5: collapse of the two party system in Britain. Even though
24:13
Speaker 5: Labor has a big majority, it's miles behind in the polls.
24:16
Speaker 5: The leading party in the polls now is the Reform Party.
24:19
Speaker 5: There are five parties who are significant in the polls
24:22
Speaker 5: and have big representations at Westminster. The traditional center right
24:26
Speaker 5: parties have been completely disappeared and replaced. In France and Italy,
24:31
Speaker 5: and in Germany and in Ireland, the center right and
24:35
Speaker 5: center left parties have to be in a kind of
24:37
Speaker 5: hopeless coalition of the collapsing mainstream against radical opponents. That
24:43
Speaker 5: would be like Liberal and Labor going into coalition in
24:46
Speaker 5: Australia against the Greens and the Teals, which may very
24:49
Speaker 5: well happen one day. Now. The problem with the Liberal
24:54
Speaker 5: and National split. I got quite a lot of sympathy
24:56
Speaker 5: with the Nats here, but the big problem is that
25:00
Speaker 5: it means that they're not an alternative government. While ever
25:03
Speaker 5: they're split. They know, in the Westminster system, the party, yeah,
25:08
Speaker 5: the party or the coalition has to make the internal
25:10
Speaker 5: trade offs and present a coherent program to the people,
25:14
Speaker 5: whereas the Liberals will go to the election, Natural go
25:17
Speaker 5: to the election, and should they form a majority between
25:20
Speaker 5: the two, they'll then have to hammer out their policy
25:22
Speaker 5: compromises after the election. I think that's going to be
25:25
Speaker 5: a very hard sell, and so it leaves Labor as
25:28
Speaker 5: the only real party of government.
25:32
Speaker 2: I mean key in the blue. Let's be honest, wasn't
25:34
Speaker 2: about all the other regionally based policies that they wanted
25:38
Speaker 2: in the coalition agreement document. The big one was nuclear
25:42
Speaker 2: two weeks ago on May. The nuclear was a policy
25:45
Speaker 2: that they all agreed on. Now, clearly there's internal divisions,
25:49
Speaker 2: but what staggers me that we in Australia are having
25:52
Speaker 2: fight about a technology about nuclear power that the rest
25:55
Speaker 2: of the world are embracing. You know, we've seen that
25:58
Speaker 2: move this week from Germany move their opposition to nuclear power.
26:02
Speaker 2: We've got nuclear in Canada that ramp it up, even
26:05
Speaker 2: more so in the UK, and even in the UK
26:09
Speaker 2: they're at least having a debate about net zero. I'm
26:11
Speaker 2: not saying dump net zero, but surely we're big enough
26:14
Speaker 2: to have the debate. Tony Blair says we've got to
26:17
Speaker 2: have a debate. That's hardly a radical position.
26:21
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's really fascinating. Peter and I've had a day
26:24
Speaker 5: today talking mainly to National Party of People, and I'm
26:28
Speaker 5: sort of half having my mind a little bit changed.
26:31
Speaker 5: One of the problems with the Liberal Party in the
26:33
Speaker 5: last few years is it's been neither Arthur nor Martha.
26:36
Speaker 5: It doesn't really believe in net zero. And the truth
26:39
Speaker 5: is you and I can say this because we're commentators,
26:41
Speaker 5: not political leaders. Net zero is a completely fraudulent concept.
26:44
Speaker 5: You cannot have human activity on this planet.
26:47
Speaker 2: And if you talk to them on the phone, you
26:52
Speaker 2: and I know most of them, they'll say it's a croc.
26:58
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you do any calculation, and net zero relies
27:01
Speaker 5: on every airplane flying on biofuel. Well, when is that
27:05
Speaker 5: going to happen? Give me a break. Russia, China, India
27:08
Speaker 5: and now the United States, Indonesia, all the great, bigger
27:12
Speaker 5: mitters in the world couldn't give tuppence for net zero
27:14
Speaker 5: and a blasting ahead with coal five power stations at
27:17
Speaker 5: a million miles an hour. They're doing a lot of
27:19
Speaker 5: renewables as well. But the problem with the Liberal party
27:22
Speaker 5: is it hasn't had the courage of its convictions or
27:25
Speaker 5: the courage of its lack of convictions, so it can't
27:28
Speaker 5: say net zero is a fraud. We're not skeptics about
27:32
Speaker 5: climate change. We're going to reduce emissions, but we're not
27:35
Speaker 5: going to tie ourselves to an impossible target. And yes,
27:38
Speaker 5: we're going to have nuclear energy, although I think the
27:40
Speaker 5: specifics of those six or seven power plants was a
27:44
Speaker 5: bit problematic. They can't really do that. But if you're
27:47
Speaker 5: going to do that you've got to do it with energy.
27:49
Speaker 5: You've got to go at a million miles an hour.
27:50
Speaker 5: You've got to go like Tony Abbott or Kevin rud
27:52
Speaker 5: when they are opposition leaders, get on every program, argue
27:55
Speaker 5: your case at every time, unleash every one of you,
27:58
Speaker 5: every one of your front benches. But then they don't
28:00
Speaker 5: have the courage of their lack of convictions either. They
28:02
Speaker 5: can't say, yes, we've signed up to net zero, we
28:05
Speaker 5: really believe it, and we're going to do it better
28:07
Speaker 5: than labor. What they do is try to say, well,
28:10
Speaker 5: we're going to say nothing on that zero, hope you
28:11
Speaker 5: don't notice, and we're going to win the election on
28:14
Speaker 5: the basis that we're going to take twenty cents off
28:16
Speaker 5: a leader of petrol at the federal station. It doesn't work.
28:21
Speaker 5: I mean, the great counter example to how politics can
28:24
Speaker 5: work is the Voice. You know, when Just Center Price
28:28
Speaker 5: came out against the Voice, it had sixty five percent
28:31
Speaker 5: public approval. All the liberals Polsters were telling them they
28:34
Speaker 5: had to go with a voice. Just Center Price forced
28:37
Speaker 5: the Nationals to go against the Voice. The Nationals force
28:39
Speaker 5: the Liberals. They won the argument. They won a huge victory,
28:42
Speaker 5: but they're not brave enough to do that. On most
28:44
Speaker 5: policy areas.
28:47
Speaker 2: I'll tell you whatever we have fought zero or its
28:51
Speaker 2: permutations of carbon schemes a whole box and dice carbon
28:54
Speaker 2: taxes as an economic issue. As you say, with conviction,
28:58
Speaker 2: we have won the war where we don't even get
29:01
Speaker 2: on the field, as we did with the nuclear debate.
29:03
Speaker 2: We dropped the policy and we ran. We are punished
29:06
Speaker 2: for it. Great analysis, Greg, Thank you. Right after the break,
29:10
Speaker 2: the panel will dig into Labour campaign director Paul Ericson
29:13
Speaker 2: speaks today at the National Press Club, and plenty of
29:15
Speaker 2: lessons there for the opposition. What's fat and what's Labour's
29:19
Speaker 2: spin designed to dem moralize? Welcome back still to come.
29:28
Speaker 2: I'll speak with a former SAS commander about morale amongst
29:32
Speaker 2: Our veterans. The Breton Report still hangs over their heads
29:36
Speaker 2: ahead of groundbreaking documentary that'll be screened tomorrow night at
29:39
Speaker 2: the War Memorial in Canberra. First, let's return to that
29:43
Speaker 2: speech today at the National Press Club from Labour's National secretary,
29:46
Speaker 2: the campaign boss, Paul Ericson, poking the coalition in its
29:50
Speaker 2: soft underbelly of energy, knowing of course that this lies
29:54
Speaker 2: at the heart of yesterday's split, Ericsson.
29:58
Speaker 10: Said this the coalition needs to accept the lessons from
30:03
Speaker 10: the last two federal elections and their last two defeats
30:07
Speaker 10: if they want to be competitive again, and I think
30:10
Speaker 10: that starts with facing up to the reality of climate
30:13
Speaker 10: change and to the energy transition that the country needs
30:17
Speaker 10: to make.
30:19
Speaker 2: Dan Watt, you never take advice from your opponents. That's
30:22
Speaker 2: not designed to do you well. So discuss that speech.
30:25
Speaker 2: Let's bring in the panel senior fellow at the Mensies
30:27
Speaker 2: Research Center, Nick Cator, a deputy executive director at the IPA,
30:31
Speaker 2: Daniel wild Well, fairbit to go through, but I want
30:34
Speaker 2: to start with those comments you just made their on renewables,
30:36
Speaker 2: I mean, is lauding renewables as part of their big win.
30:40
Speaker 2: And of course, as I said, it'd say that this
30:42
Speaker 2: speech is in part about congratulating their base but also
30:46
Speaker 2: wedging the coalition. As I always say, when you go
30:49
Speaker 2: to write history, the victor holds the pen. And of course,
30:52
Speaker 2: given the coalition split, those comments are designed to drive
30:55
Speaker 2: that wedge home from yesterday even harder. And yet where
30:59
Speaker 2: the as I said just a moment ago, have fought
31:02
Speaker 2: climate nicicator as an economic issue twenty ten, twenty thirteen,
31:06
Speaker 2: even twenty nineteen, they have won where they had me
31:11
Speaker 2: to labor they have not.
31:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the energy policy was decisive in twenty
31:19
Speaker 1: nineteen when we took on their forty five percent target
31:23
Speaker 1: and showed it was just going to cause economic chaos. Yes,
31:26
Speaker 1: Paul Erickson's right. We do have to learn the lessons
31:28
Speaker 1: from twenty two and twenty five. The lesson from twenty
31:31
Speaker 1: five was we ran dead on it, Peter, we just
31:33
Speaker 1: didn't talk about energy. We me too labor podcasts SEC
31:37
Speaker 1: zero twenty fifty, which I think was I thought was
31:40
Speaker 1: a mistake at the time I held my council. Now
31:43
Speaker 1: I'm happy to say it was a mistake. And in
31:45
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, well, we had a strong policy, but
31:50
Speaker 1: it was so badly organized. We made strategic, huge strategic
31:54
Speaker 1: errors in how we constructed the nuclear policy, or how
31:57
Speaker 1: liberals constructed the nuclear policy, and then made even bigger
32:01
Speaker 1: strategic errors in how they tried to sell it. And
32:03
Speaker 1: they left hanging this idea the government was going to
32:06
Speaker 1: pay for the lot. I want nuclear and I hope
32:09
Speaker 1: it's not going to pay for the lot. But because
32:11
Speaker 1: Paul Erickson is a campaigner, he's talking about from campaigner's
32:15
Speaker 1: point of view, me talking about it from a policy
32:18
Speaker 1: and an engineering point of view. There is no alternative,
32:21
Speaker 1: no alternative. And if the.
32:25
Speaker 2: Coalition nick absents themselves from this debate by me tooing labor,
32:30
Speaker 2: it sets us up for a trajectory of significant energy
32:35
Speaker 2: and national security and industrial harm, and it consigns households
32:40
Speaker 2: for basically being mendicant survivors on handouts from government just
32:45
Speaker 2: to pay their energy bills. I mean, I think the
32:48
Speaker 2: Liberal Party should pack up and go home if it's
32:50
Speaker 2: not prepared to get into this fight.
32:54
Speaker 6: Yeah.
32:55
Speaker 14: Yeah.
32:56
Speaker 1: I had a conversation with a Liberal MP who then
33:00
Speaker 1: held his seat and it doesn't now it's in Teal hands.
33:03
Speaker 1: And he told me in twenty nineteen after the election,
33:05
Speaker 1: we have to adopt zero twenty fifty or we're going
33:08
Speaker 1: to lose Wentworth. But Keller, et cetera, et cetera, guess what.
33:12
Speaker 1: We didn't adopt zero twenty fifty and we lost all
33:16
Speaker 1: those seats and we could only win one of them back.
33:18
Speaker 1: So it is a disaster. We should face up for
33:21
Speaker 1: the fact that was a mistake. And I think over
33:23
Speaker 1: the next three years, the world debate is going to
33:25
Speaker 1: move on very quickly with this, and we're going to
33:27
Speaker 1: look like idiots if we're still clinging to net zero
33:30
Speaker 1: twenty fifty in three years time.
33:33
Speaker 14: Dan.
33:34
Speaker 2: No one believes. No one with a brain believes that
33:38
Speaker 2: if the Lips were just to give the Teals or
33:39
Speaker 2: the left everything that they want, if they absented themselves
33:42
Speaker 2: from the net zero debate, if they rolled over and
33:44
Speaker 2: scratched the renewables only belly, that suddenly the Teals would
33:47
Speaker 2: all just give up their seats and go back to
33:49
Speaker 2: their day jobs and hand them back to the Liberal Party.
33:51
Speaker 2: That's not going to happen. You know, once you roll
33:53
Speaker 2: over an energy and net zero and nuclear or whatever
33:55
Speaker 2: else it might be, they'll come after you on social policy,
34:00
Speaker 2: on universal incomes, on taxation. I mean, they want to
34:04
Speaker 2: destroy their opponents. This isn't just sort of a chess
34:07
Speaker 2: game for them.
34:11
Speaker 5: Well, that's right.
34:13
Speaker 15: You know, the adoption by the Coalition of net zero
34:17
Speaker 15: and taking that to the twenty two election of the
34:19
Speaker 15: twenty five election has significantly diminished their credibility in the community.
34:25
Speaker 15: Exactly as Nick outlined, there was a whole bunch of
34:28
Speaker 15: strategic errors when it came to the nuclear policy role
34:31
Speaker 15: out but bigger than that. For Ericson to claim that
34:35
Speaker 15: this was somehow a mandate for a greater expansion of
34:38
Speaker 15: renewables is actually inconsistent with the campaign that he run
34:42
Speaker 15: because I could tell you as a candidate on the
34:44
Speaker 15: ground for the Liberal Party, net zero wasn't mentioned once.
34:48
Speaker 15: It was not on any Labor billboards, it was not
34:50
Speaker 15: on any Labor pamphlets or handout material. Chris Bowen was
34:55
Speaker 15: not a feature in the national campaign at all because
34:59
Speaker 15: Labor not Ultimately, net zero is a vote loser, not
35:02
Speaker 15: a vote winner. Survey after survey, including those undertaken by ourselves,
35:08
Speaker 15: shows that Australians what affordability and reliability, are not cutting
35:12
Speaker 15: emissions to be the priority of energy policy in this country.
35:17
Speaker 15: So if net zero was such a big vote winner,
35:20
Speaker 15: why did it Labor run on that policy and put
35:23
Speaker 15: it at the top of their list because they know
35:25
Speaker 15: that it is a vote loser.
35:29
Speaker 2: Today, Erickson had some comments about online campaigning influences and
35:34
Speaker 2: the use of social media. I thought they were very
35:36
Speaker 2: very interesting. I have to say I agreed with most
35:39
Speaker 2: of what he said. Let's have a listen.
35:42
Speaker 10: We paid close attention to what had happened online during
35:45
Speaker 10: the referendum, and did quite a bit of work following
35:47
Speaker 10: it to understand how the No campaign organized their digital campaigning.
35:52
Speaker 10: The media landscape has changed, that's clear, and the pace
35:56
Speaker 10: of change is accelerating. There's traditional legacy media institutions, there's
36:02
Speaker 10: new and emerging force of media. Then there's individuals who
36:05
Speaker 10: are out there on different platforms as content creators. We
36:12
Speaker 10: took the view that we needed to engage with all comers.
36:16
Speaker 14: Now.
36:16
Speaker 2: Niki claimed that the coalition misread the voice result. I
36:21
Speaker 2: don't agree. I think they failed to capitalize on the result.
36:26
Speaker 2: That's a different thing. But I do think Labor played
36:29
Speaker 2: a very very canny game. And look, it's a grown
36:32
Speaker 2: up campaigner that goes back and wants to know where
36:35
Speaker 2: they go wrong. To often you sort of blame somebody else,
36:38
Speaker 2: as the Liberal Party and the National Party seem to
36:39
Speaker 2: be doing right now, it's everybody else's fault. But you
36:42
Speaker 2: only ever pick yourself up and win if you learn
36:45
Speaker 2: exactly why and be honest why you went down the
36:48
Speaker 2: path he went down, and of course he learned from
36:52
Speaker 2: all of those mistakes and it's very very clear that
36:55
Speaker 2: put them into the game this time. And the limbs Unfortunately,
36:58
Speaker 2: I don't think they were strong enough in the online space.
37:03
Speaker 14: Yeah.
37:03
Speaker 1: I think Paul Erikson made maybe five good points in
37:06
Speaker 1: his whole address, and that was one of them. You
37:08
Speaker 1: have to be everywhere. You don't turn down any opportunity
37:11
Speaker 1: to be on any platform nowaday days. And here's why, Peter,
37:15
Speaker 1: I mean, twenty years ago, if I got the train
37:17
Speaker 1: into Sydney, you know, almost everybody on that train probably
37:20
Speaker 1: would have had one of four newspapers in their hand,
37:22
Speaker 1: probably one of two or three, and so you kind
37:25
Speaker 1: of know what the agenda is. Now they're all looking
37:28
Speaker 1: at their phones. Now what are they looking at? Who knows?
37:30
Speaker 14: Who knows?
37:31
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of them will be reading your
37:32
Speaker 1: column tomorrow, I dare say. But what else are they
37:35
Speaker 1: watching on social media, on influencers?
37:38
Speaker 5: Whatever? Are we?
37:40
Speaker 16: Really?
37:40
Speaker 1: The only way to campaign now is to be on
37:43
Speaker 1: every platform, all the time. The most you can just
37:46
Speaker 1: be out everywhere, and I think Albert Easy did that
37:49
Speaker 1: very well. I don't think that we've learned that lesson yet.
37:52
Speaker 1: That's just one of the campaigning lessons we have to
37:55
Speaker 1: learn now.
37:58
Speaker 2: This is a column I never never missed. Phil Courry
38:00
Speaker 2: at the Australian Financial Review. He had a shrewd observation today,
38:04
Speaker 2: haven't listen Ten.
38:06
Speaker 17: Or so years ago, a thirty four and a bit
38:08
Speaker 17: primary vote would have been considered a failure by Labor.
38:11
Speaker 17: It's now handed you nearly two thirds of the Parliament
38:15
Speaker 17: and preferences obviously now much more important than they once were.
38:20
Speaker 17: Can you sort of comment on that sort of new
38:22
Speaker 17: reality and are these massive margins like you've won this
38:24
Speaker 17: election more volatile than perhaps they would have once been
38:28
Speaker 17: when you had a primary vote with a four in
38:30
Speaker 17: front of it?
38:32
Speaker 2: And Dan, I'll make the point. You know, Albaneze has
38:34
Speaker 2: got a ninety three seat majority off the back of
38:37
Speaker 2: a primary vote in this election that is lower than
38:41
Speaker 2: the election where Bill Shorten lost lost to Malcolm Turnbull
38:46
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen. And I made the point all the
38:48
Speaker 2: way through the campaign, in all of the published polling
38:51
Speaker 2: that preferences will be key and the way in which
38:54
Speaker 2: they are running preference foles, preference flows in some of
38:58
Speaker 2: those polls way off the mark. The Libs appear to me,
39:03
Speaker 2: and you've just come out of a campaign as a
39:04
Speaker 2: candidate lives a pear to me to be flat footed
39:07
Speaker 2: on preferences. And we also know that the left have
39:10
Speaker 2: got this whole program now, the tails and legalized cannabis
39:14
Speaker 2: and all of them in harvesting preferences and funneling them
39:19
Speaker 2: back to labor in a very disciplined way. We're like
39:24
Speaker 2: primary school kids and they're like university kids. We are
39:27
Speaker 2: so far out of the game.
39:31
Speaker 15: Well, that's right, Peter, And I think you know, the
39:34
Speaker 15: slow point in securing a preference deal if the how
39:37
Speaker 15: to vote cards are getting to the hands of the voters,
39:40
Speaker 15: so you need to actually look at the practical on
39:42
Speaker 15: the ground strategies to make sure that people are voting
39:47
Speaker 15: following the preference flows. I think there's a bigger point
39:49
Speaker 15: here as well, Peter, which is I think that the
39:52
Speaker 15: era of big box political parties is now over. You know,
39:57
Speaker 15: even ten even just ten years ago, the Liberal Party
40:01
Speaker 15: could be the broad Church that John Howard so masterfully
40:06
Speaker 15: was able to achieve through his you know, he first
40:08
Speaker 15: initiated it with his leadership and his capacity in his wisdom,
40:11
Speaker 15: and that lasted a very long time where you know,
40:14
Speaker 15: the Liberal Party could could hold comfortably hold inner city
40:17
Speaker 15: seats like Cuyong and hold out of suburban seats that
40:21
Speaker 15: is no longer the case because our society has changed
40:25
Speaker 15: so much, even in just ten years, where the inner
40:29
Speaker 15: cities and those who votes here have such a different
40:33
Speaker 15: lived experience to those in the outer suburbs. There's a
40:36
Speaker 15: massive wealth disparity, there's a very big educational difference, there's
40:40
Speaker 15: a big demographic difference. So I don't think that these
40:44
Speaker 15: two cohorts of voters can be housed within the same
40:47
Speaker 15: political party anymore. And what that means is the Liberal
40:51
Speaker 15: Party has to make a choice. Are they going to
40:54
Speaker 15: be a party of the inner cities or are they
40:56
Speaker 15: going to be a party of the outer suburbs.
40:58
Speaker 14: Now.
40:58
Speaker 15: I accept that there are exceptions to this. Goldstein is
41:02
Speaker 15: an example that deserves to be studied and considered, but
41:05
Speaker 15: by and large Liberal Party will have to make that choice,
41:09
Speaker 15: and that is something that they will have to realize
41:11
Speaker 15: over the next year or two.
41:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, there'll be convulsions. As I say, for a long
41:17
Speaker 2: time here. Leave it there, Gens, thank you. I'll also
41:20
Speaker 2: make the point too. When asked today about the Trump
41:22
Speaker 2: influence on the campaign, Ericson down played it completely. I
41:26
Speaker 2: call bs On that otherwise they wouldn't have run it
41:29
Speaker 2: so hard. It would have been there in its polling,
41:31
Speaker 2: and I think it was absolutely a factor like medi
41:34
Speaker 2: scare and everything else that they'd beat up and ride
41:36
Speaker 2: with all. Right after the break, I was joined by
41:38
Speaker 2: a format SAS commander to discuss why the new documentary
41:41
Speaker 2: Bravery and Betrayal is a much must watch for every Australian.
41:45
Speaker 2: The head of the launch tomorrow at the Australian War
41:48
Speaker 2: Memorial Kel Richard's coming up. Of course, it's Wednesday, the
41:56
Speaker 2: first ony day. I showed you a sneak peek of
41:58
Speaker 2: a new documentary called Bravery and Betrayal, which is giving
42:02
Speaker 2: SAS veterans a chance to share their story following the
42:06
Speaker 2: negative fallout from the Brereton Report. The film showcases the
42:10
Speaker 2: bravery of the SAS, particularly during the major twenty ten
42:13
Speaker 2: Battle of Teazak. During the battle, an Australian Special Operations
42:18
Speaker 2: Task Group, along with US air support and Afghan allies,
42:22
Speaker 2: successfully cleared the village of Tazak of Taliban insurgents without
42:27
Speaker 2: losing any personnel. Here is a clip from the film.
42:32
Speaker 14: But the guys were taking such intense fire because they'd
42:35
Speaker 14: landed down in the valley. The helicopters were coming in
42:38
Speaker 14: with the operators hanging out the side of the aircraft,
42:41
Speaker 14: sliding in on gun positions, trying to suppress them, and
42:45
Speaker 14: then flipping around when they ran out of ammunition, and
42:47
Speaker 14: then sliding back in to suppress them. We had apatche
42:51
Speaker 14: aircraft lined up coming.
42:52
Speaker 6: In and everybody got out of their lives. That's pretty
43:02
Speaker 6: amazing for a fighting like that. Just can't do that
43:06
Speaker 6: without being good at what.
43:07
Speaker 2: You do, I'm pleased to say. One of the men
43:11
Speaker 2: there in the film, former essays Commander Colonel Paul Burns,
43:14
Speaker 2: joins me, Now, Paul, I have to say, you know,
43:17
Speaker 2: honor of my life serving for a PM when you
43:22
Speaker 2: were all in Afghanistan and reading of the heroics and
43:26
Speaker 2: being just so proud of our Australian military, and it
43:30
Speaker 2: just makes me feel that it's about time the rest
43:34
Speaker 2: of the country got to hear some of these stories.
43:37
Speaker 2: How important is it for you and your former comrades
43:40
Speaker 2: to have this out in the public domain.
43:42
Speaker 14: Now, well, I actually think it goes beyond that. It's
43:47
Speaker 14: important that our nation feels proud of what we did
43:51
Speaker 14: over in Afghanistan. It's a continuation of the Anzac story
43:54
Speaker 14: in my mind, and what our ADF did, what our
43:57
Speaker 14: wonderful Army did, and then what the Special Operations Task
44:01
Speaker 14: Force did, the Special Air Service Regiment members, the two
44:06
Speaker 14: Commando Regiment members and our Special Operations engineers, plus all
44:11
Speaker 14: the supporting stuff that we had. It's a continuation of
44:15
Speaker 14: the ANZAC story, something to be really proud of, and
44:18
Speaker 14: this documentary talks about what it's really like. There's no
44:24
Speaker 14: narrative from somebody else telling the story. These soldiers are
44:27
Speaker 14: telling the Australian public what it was like, what they did,
44:31
Speaker 14: what they were feeling. The documentary goes on to talk
44:34
Speaker 14: about the impacts on families, on the kids, on what
44:39
Speaker 14: it's like to choose a life of service and sacrifice.
44:47
Speaker 2: How is the falla from Brereton impacted veterans and family?
44:51
Speaker 2: Is this part or is this a critical part of
44:53
Speaker 2: the reset?
44:57
Speaker 14: It is absolutely critical. The IgA has really put a
45:01
Speaker 14: dark cloud over the soldiers involved. In actual fact. Further
45:07
Speaker 14: than that, only about four hundred odd guys were interviewed
45:10
Speaker 14: by the IGADF, but the impact is felt right across
45:13
Speaker 14: a Special Operations community. It's like a sort of democles
45:17
Speaker 14: over their head where they don't know if they're going
45:20
Speaker 14: to get hauled in for further questioning.
45:22
Speaker 5: It's a bit of an unresolved truth.
45:25
Speaker 14: I personally wasn't interviewed at any time, and so I'm
45:28
Speaker 14: seeing my soldiers here feeling really they're suffering from a
45:35
Speaker 14: deep moral injury that they haven't gone through a due process.
45:39
Speaker 14: And some of the stories of the investigations are harrowing,
45:43
Speaker 14: considering some of these soldiers gone in and out of
45:45
Speaker 14: combat continuously and had to undergo this sort of questioning
45:50
Speaker 14: with again an unresolved outcome in their minds.
45:56
Speaker 2: Thank you for joining me, Paul. All credit to the
45:58
Speaker 2: team that have put this dog out together, and I
45:59
Speaker 2: am again imploring my audience to watch it when it
46:03
Speaker 2: hits the War Memorial tomorrow night. Obviously, there is a
46:05
Speaker 2: QR code. People can hit the QR code now and
46:09
Speaker 2: they'll find out where they can see it around the country.
46:11
Speaker 2: There's another a number of other dates, of course, But
46:13
Speaker 2: thank you again, thank you for your service, and thank
46:15
Speaker 2: you for your time. All right after break, kel Richard's
46:18
Speaker 2: plenty of words to get through to you. Then welcome back.
46:25
Speaker 2: Kel Richard joins me. Now let's start. Well, I want
46:28
Speaker 2: a debate about what's conservative, what's liberal. We talked about liberal,
46:32
Speaker 2: the small l version and some of the parties like
46:35
Speaker 2: the Canadian to use the term liberal for the left
46:38
Speaker 2: talk to us about conservative kel okay.
46:41
Speaker 16: The word conservative came into English late thirteen hundred 's
46:45
Speaker 16: from Latin via French, and the core Latin word means
46:49
Speaker 16: to protect, to save, to keep intact. That's the core idea.
46:53
Speaker 16: So conservative political philosophy is focused on tradition in the
46:57
Speaker 16: way that classical liberalism is focused on free and you
47:00
Speaker 16: can see that by contrasting the conservative with the progressive.
47:04
Speaker 16: The progressives think they are the smartest generation who've ever lived. Therefore,
47:08
Speaker 16: all traditions should either be demolished or regarded with the
47:11
Speaker 16: deepest suspicion. On the other hand, you've got conservatives saying, no,
47:15
Speaker 16: we stand on the shoulders of giants, and we need
47:17
Speaker 16: to protect the past and demolish traditions only very carefully
47:22
Speaker 16: and thoughtfully if we're going to do it at all.
47:24
Speaker 16: And can I say, in my reading, I came across
47:27
Speaker 16: the concept of liberal conservatism, which is a combination of
47:31
Speaker 16: the freedom centered focus of liberalism with the free society,
47:35
Speaker 16: free markets, free people, with the law and order and
47:39
Speaker 16: protecting traditions emphasis of conservatism so there is actually a
47:44
Speaker 16: concept called liberal conservatism. Peter, do you like that concept?
47:51
Speaker 14: Well?
47:51
Speaker 2: I like it heavy on the conservative and light on
47:54
Speaker 2: the liberal, if I'm honest. I mean I've always said
47:56
Speaker 2: a conservative of someone, you know, the granddaughter who doesn't
47:59
Speaker 2: think she knows more than her grandmother. And I do
48:02
Speaker 2: think there were things that are worth conserving. I don't
48:05
Speaker 2: think we can serve enough in society anymore. But well
48:08
Speaker 2: over there, we'll keep coming back to this one. Hey,
48:10
Speaker 2: Craig wants to know why do we call buying a
48:12
Speaker 2: round of drinks a shout?
48:15
Speaker 16: It's an Australian expression started here in the eighteen fifties
48:18
Speaker 16: and it actually started in very noisy pars bars and
48:22
Speaker 16: pubs where you had to literally shout to get the
48:26
Speaker 16: attention of the landlord or the host of the barmaid whatever. Consequently,
48:32
Speaker 16: the shout moved around the table.
48:34
Speaker 5: So there you are.
48:35
Speaker 2: Have we got time for one more? Can you fit
48:38
Speaker 2: one more in?
48:38
Speaker 16: Very quick?
48:39
Speaker 2: Quickly? You choose one?
48:44
Speaker 16: Did you say done and dust it? No, it's time.
48:47
Speaker 2: Look at the clock that's going that one. We'll do
48:50
Speaker 2: it next week, all right, all right? Coln Okay, thanks
48:54
Speaker 2: very much. That's it for me see tomorrow.