Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to seven AM. The
Speaker 1: Liberal Party has begun asking what it needs to do
Speaker 1: to modernize. Its answer so far is Tony Abbott. As
Speaker 1: Angus Taylor tries to put some distance between the coalition
Speaker 1: and One Nation, Pauline Hanson's party has had a week
Speaker 1: that looks less like a political revolution and more like
Speaker 1: a holiday gone wrong. Meanwhile, away from the political theater,
Speaker 1: because the economics of custom migration numbers economically stacked up
Speaker 1: at a time when one of the country's most important
Speaker 1: systems is still failing the people it's meant to care for.
Speaker 1: Today federal political correspondent for the Age and Sydney Morning Herald,
Speaker 1: The Tassier Crisantos on the Liberal Party's identity crisis, one
Speaker 1: nation's fortunes and an age care system still not fit
Speaker 1: for purpose. It's Saturday, July eighteen, the Tazia. This week,
Speaker 1: Angus Taylor finally ruled out a coalition with One Nation,
Speaker 1: although Sarah Ferguson on seventh thirty really had to push
Speaker 1: him hard to do it.
Speaker 2: Don't Liberal voters have a right to know that this
Speaker 2: party that would cause, as you describe it, an eternity
Speaker 2: of pain is one you would never form government with
Speaker 2: under any circumstances.
Speaker 3: Well as I say, we've got absolutely no plan to form.
Speaker 2: Government with it, the same as ruling it. What I'm
Speaker 2: looking for.
Speaker 3: Now, as I say I want a coalition with the
Speaker 3: National Party.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he's been dancing around the question
Speaker 1: for so long?
Speaker 4: I think Taylor in particular has found it very difficult
Speaker 4: to land the right notes here.
Speaker 3: I'm earling it out. There's no plan, There's well, there
Speaker 3: is no plan, I can tell you right now.
Speaker 4: I think we've seen a lot of the kind of
Speaker 4: one Nation attack lines outsourced to other members of the party.
Speaker 4: And I think part of that is as the leader,
Speaker 4: you know, he wants to appeal to us as broader
Speaker 4: voter base as possible. But I think what people have
Speaker 4: picked up on is it has seemed somewhat weak.
Speaker 3: And I have been very clear about this one hundred times,
Speaker 3: so I don't know how many times, but many many times.
Speaker 4: And the reason and I think the other thing we've
Speaker 4: seen is that hasn't really been working. The coalitions continue
Speaker 4: to lose ground to One Nation in the polls. I
Speaker 4: think there's been a lot of internal kind of push
Speaker 4: to take a harder line against one nation. You've obviously
Speaker 4: had some coalition MPs entertained this idea of an alliance,
Speaker 4: for example Tony Passon, the South Australian Front bencher, and
Speaker 4: then you've had a lot of other people quite frustrated
Speaker 4: by that tactic, saying, you know, the election's not for
Speaker 4: another couple of years, we can't throw in the town now.
Speaker 4: So I think we've seen Taylor kind of this week
Speaker 4: adopt that stance. Whether it's a little too little, too
Speaker 4: late to be fully compelling at this stage, I'm not sure,
Speaker 4: but I think it was probably time for him to
Speaker 4: articulate a stronger position, and I guess now at least
Speaker 4: we've seen that definitive stance from him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. How much have the internal machinations within the Liberal
Speaker 1: Party played on Angus Taylor coming to this position, particularly
Speaker 1: around Andrew Hasty's position, a potential rival to the leadership,
Speaker 1: who has been very hard line on his stance against
Speaker 1: one Nation. How much do you think that is driving
Speaker 1: this shift not only for the Liberal Party but particularly
Speaker 1: for Angus Taylor.
Speaker 4: I think for the party and for its MPs, it
Speaker 4: is a really active debate, right like there's no blueprint
Speaker 4: for them in how to get through this.
Speaker 5: I think you've had competing views.
Speaker 4: You've got the side that thinks a more conciliatory or
Speaker 4: collaborative approach with one nation might be the way to go,
Speaker 4: and then you've got the hasty camp, which is this
Speaker 4: language of we don't bend the knee. You know, it's
Speaker 4: Taylor's decision as the leader to chart those waders and
Speaker 4: to figure out the best way to do it. And
Speaker 4: I think they've obviously come to a position that they
Speaker 4: need to be firmer. The outgoing campaign director Andrew Hurst
Speaker 4: a few weeks ago as well made that very clear
Speaker 4: in his final address to the Liberal Party when he said,
Speaker 4: you know, one nation or not our friends, and we
Speaker 4: can't treat them as such. So I think those warnings
Speaker 4: have been coming from different parts of the party quite loudly.
Speaker 4: And then I think both you know, with Taylor finally
Speaker 4: ruling that out, and also a speech he gave about
Speaker 4: one Nation where it kind of explained, you know, how
Speaker 4: much one nation.
Speaker 5: Will cost the nation, I'll blow up the joint, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Liberal Party has been doing some further sault seishing this
Speaker 1: week with the release of a discussion paper throwing around
Speaker 1: some ideas to rebuild the party after back to back
Speaker 1: election disasters. What does the paper identify as the party's
Speaker 1: biggest problem?
Speaker 4: The things that it's identified year after year after year. Really,
Speaker 4: this paper is picked up on the theme of the
Speaker 4: last election review. It has long term structural issues with
Speaker 4: membership with young people, with women, and.
Speaker 5: Also the issue with multicultural communities.
Speaker 4: And I think previous election reviews have picked up specifically
Speaker 4: on the Chinese DASP and that being a problem for
Speaker 4: the Liberal Party. So in some ways it's kind of
Speaker 4: nothing new to see here. It's rehashing a lot of
Speaker 4: these structural issues. I think the problem for the coalition
Speaker 4: in the last six months, in particular, as this one
Speaker 4: nation vote in the polls has soared, is that it's
Speaker 4: kind of become clear that young people, multicultural communities, women
Speaker 4: go to how do we grow our vote share and
Speaker 4: grow our party and its support. The one nation phenomenon
Speaker 4: changed that dynamic and the question instead became how do
Speaker 4: we consolidate our support base and stop it bleeding? And
Speaker 4: I think in some ways they are actually quite different
Speaker 4: questions with quite different strategies, And that's why I think
Speaker 4: We've not seen this active effort from the Parliamentary Liberal
Speaker 4: Party in the last six months to chase those other
Speaker 4: demographics because it's been so concerned with shoring up what
Speaker 4: remains of its support base.
Speaker 1: And so while this has been happening, all these discussions
Speaker 1: are taking place, including around how the party engages better
Speaker 1: with multicultural communities and gets their support. The party's new president,
Speaker 1: Tony Abbott, released a video called Diversity is Not Our Strengths,
Speaker 1: arguing that multiculturalism has failed. Now.
Speaker 6: For many years, migrants to Australia were expected to integrate
Speaker 6: from day one and to assimilate as soon as possible. Lately, though,
Speaker 6: under the doctrine of multiculturalism, migrants have been encouraged to
Speaker 6: keep their culture.
Speaker 1: Indeed, how can the party rebuild trust with multicultural voters
Speaker 1: when its own president is making that argument.
Speaker 5: That's the question, isn't it.
Speaker 4: We had Angus Taylor kind of dance around this question
Speaker 4: of multiculturalism a couple of weeks ago, kind of came
Speaker 4: back to it with what is now a stated support
Speaker 4: for Australian multiculturalism. But I think then you get to
Speaker 4: a credibility gap, right, and I think that's what the
Speaker 4: Liberals have kind have been dealing with for the last
Speaker 4: many years is you can talk the talk at certain
Speaker 4: points and say we support a version of multiculturalism, et cetera,
Speaker 4: but there have obviously been moves commentary that have undermined
Speaker 4: that over time. The other thing that is interesting to
Speaker 4: me is, you know, we had Susan just talking about
Speaker 4: some of these issues, you know, women, multicultural communities, younger people,
Speaker 4: you know, the sensible center, if you like. When Susan
Speaker 4: Lee came into the leadership a year ago, that was
Speaker 4: very much.
Speaker 5: Where she was pitching herself.
Speaker 4: We had her kind of trying really hard with a
Speaker 4: charm offensive in the Indian diaspora community, for example, after
Speaker 4: the turbulence with the Just Enterprise comments, and we had
Speaker 4: Susan Lee in her front bench kind of go forward
Speaker 4: and really try to engage with the Indian community. Now
Speaker 4: we're so much kind of further beyond that with Anger Tailor,
Speaker 4: you know, and Anger. Taylor has also made very strong
Speaker 4: comments on immigration and multiculturalism. He's kind of repeated commentary
Speaker 4: about you know, standards being too low. What he says
Speaker 4: about migrants from liberal democracy backgrounds being better fits for
Speaker 4: Australia I think all of that does probably create a
Speaker 4: sense of unease, and we've heard it from multicultural leaders
Speaker 4: across the community that they do feel kind of targeted
Speaker 4: or disparaged by that retrick.
Speaker 5: So again, it.
Speaker 4: Doesn't seem like that's what the party is really trying
Speaker 4: to do at this point in appealing to those voters.
Speaker 1: Coming up. The politics of migration means economic reality Tasia.
Speaker 1: Policy wise, an area that the Coalition is mirroring one
Speaker 1: nation is migration promising a lower intake. But you've done
Speaker 1: some excellent reporting on the economics of cutting immigration this week,
Speaker 1: and you found that cutting immigration could actually cost billions.
Speaker 1: What did the costing show?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so these are the costumes from the Parliamentary Budget Office,
Speaker 4: which is basically modeled the fiscal impact of migration. I
Speaker 4: think the key takeout is, in general, migration is good
Speaker 4: for the economy because migrants tend to be working age,
Speaker 4: they've kind of done their education abroad, they come in
Speaker 4: and they over their lifetime tend to pay more tax
Speaker 4: than they receive in government benefits. So that's kind of
Speaker 4: one lens and it does show that if you were
Speaker 4: to implement a drastic cut to immigration, the coalition's position
Speaker 4: could be about one hundred thousand people less than what
Speaker 4: we've got. Now, you know, that would run into the
Speaker 4: cost of tens of billions over the forward estimates. One
Speaker 4: nation's kind of got a net zero migration figure, the one.
Speaker 5: That zero they believe in, which would cost even more.
Speaker 4: Now, of course, budget impact isn't the only reason. You've
Speaker 4: got to look at infrastructure, a capacity, demographic, social cohesion,
Speaker 4: and that's obviously part of the picture, and it's an
Speaker 4: important part of the picture.
Speaker 5: But even so, if you.
Speaker 4: Are a party that does come with a policy of
Speaker 4: cutting migration, I think it just shows that that does
Speaker 4: need to be offset elsewhere. And so there's a budget
Speaker 4: man question there for one nation and also for Angus
Speaker 4: Taylor at the same time that he's promising, for example,
Speaker 4: to end bracket creep. That's another very costly policy. So
Speaker 4: the question closer to the election will be how do
Speaker 4: you pay for all of this stuff? And I think
Speaker 4: that's an issue that Peter Dutton ran into at the
Speaker 4: last election as well, was making this lower numbers immigration
Speaker 4: policy square with economic reality.
Speaker 5: Basically.
Speaker 1: It's actually this week Paul and Hanson was seen holidaying
Speaker 1: with Gena Aryan Hart in southern Italy in what could
Speaker 1: only be described as the worst series of white Lotus. Ever,
Speaker 1: it's not exactly the battle image that Paul and Hanson's
Speaker 1: been trying to portray for herself, is it.
Speaker 4: No, No, it's not lounging on a several thousand dollars
Speaker 4: a night at Sicilian.
Speaker 1: Deck Freshman an interview with Tommy robertson.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, she has kind of flaunted this relationship
Speaker 4: with Gena Aryan Hart on her plane and all of
Speaker 4: this stuff over the last six months.
Speaker 5: That hasn't really seemed to hurt her.
Speaker 4: I do wonder if the bigger issue maybe with this
Speaker 4: European trip and the questions being raised around political judgment,
Speaker 4: whether Europe is where Hanson should be right now daunting around,
Speaker 4: or whether she should be consolidating her leading the polls
Speaker 4: and speaking to Australians.
Speaker 5: And I think maybe that is more of the perception issue.
Speaker 1: There's also been some reports of some internal reactions, particularly
Speaker 1: with Paul and Henson describing her daughter Lee is a
Speaker 1: potential future One Nation leader, which apparently put Barnaby Joyce's
Speaker 1: nose out of place. Are we beginning to see the
Speaker 1: wills fall off one nation or is it too early
Speaker 1: to tell.
Speaker 4: I think it's too early to tell, but it's certainly
Speaker 4: getting bumpy, and I think this was always going to happen.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: I remember when post the Phara by election, when new
Speaker 4: MP David Farley came to Parliament, there was a press
Speaker 4: conference that Hanson held with her new expanded team and
Speaker 4: it was the first time that I'd ever seen a
Speaker 4: one nation press conference attract a full court of press
Speaker 4: and it got very messy, very quickly.
Speaker 7: Senator robertson an interview on a YouTube channel a couple
Speaker 7: of weeks ago, you were asked about whether you thought
Speaker 7: the born By terror attack was a false flag. You
Speaker 7: said I doubt it was a false flag, but you
Speaker 7: went on to say, I don't know the furno the facts.
Speaker 4: Yet I'm not ruling it out because as we've seen,
Speaker 4: and especially with Malcolm Roberts, you know, this is a
Speaker 4: senator who's been espousing some quite fringe views and talking
Speaker 4: about conspiracies for quite a few years now.
Speaker 1: Sure, two things, First of all, it's an absurd proposition.
Speaker 3: Second thing is that I make reinforce the fact that
Speaker 3: I make decisions and statements based on data, and I
Speaker 3: don't have data on that.
Speaker 1: Sorry, there was no justification.
Speaker 2: I can speak up from Senator Roberts with regard to
Speaker 2: this no, because it was totally taken out of context.
Speaker 4: We have shown us No one's really applied the blowtors
Speaker 4: that because it hasn't seemed electorally relevant. But that dynamics
Speaker 4: now changed, and so you know, the questions are coming
Speaker 4: from all over the place when it comes to Hanson
Speaker 4: and her crew, and I think, you know, raining that
Speaker 4: in keeping it tight, keeping it focused and then looking
Speaker 4: like a party that could form government is going to
Speaker 4: be a challenge, and I think we'll see more of
Speaker 4: that probing. And the other thing is, you know, in
Speaker 4: parliament everyone's in competition. It's usually you know, Labor and
Speaker 4: the Coalition turning their focus to each other, but now
Speaker 4: both those parties are also turning their focus to one nation.
Speaker 4: Like we will continue to see quite a lot of
Speaker 4: scrutiny placed on one nation. And given you know a
Speaker 4: lot of it's Binnaby Joyce is a very experienced politician,
Speaker 4: the rest not so much so. How they kind of
Speaker 4: stand up to that increased level of scrutiny, it will
Speaker 4: be really interesting we'll.
Speaker 1: Be here for it before we let it go. Natassia.
Speaker 1: Labour inherited an age care system that have been condemned
Speaker 1: by a Royal commission and made fixing it one of
Speaker 1: its central promises. But this week the outgoing Age care
Speaker 1: watchdog said she believes Labour's reforms are harming some of
Speaker 1: the older people that were designed to help what's going
Speaker 1: wrong with age care.
Speaker 4: So Labour's attempted a kind of funding reset or overhaul,
Speaker 4: if you will, of the age care system. The impetus
Speaker 4: for that is that we do have an aging population
Speaker 4: who will demand more care, particularly in the next decade,
Speaker 4: and that's a huge demographic shift. So what Labour's done
Speaker 4: is kind of introduce a user pays model where for
Speaker 4: some elements of home care and age can now people
Speaker 4: with the means expected to pay more for their care.
Speaker 4: We're also seeing a trend broadly of people wanting to
Speaker 4: stay at home as they age. Part of that is,
Speaker 4: you know, it's a lot of people's preference and for
Speaker 4: the government that's also important because there's not residential age
Speaker 4: care beds for everyone. I think the Health Minister says
Speaker 4: that you'd need to be building, you know, an age
Speaker 4: care facility every three days to keep up with demand.
Speaker 4: What we heard from the Age Care Inspector General who's
Speaker 4: leaving her post at the end of the month, so
Speaker 4: she was kind of free, free to speak as candidly
Speaker 4: as she wanted, a rare opportunity for a public servant.
Speaker 4: Her take was that the focus on residential age care
Speaker 4: in the first place is not right. She thinks that
Speaker 4: home care, home care that kind of centers the rights
Speaker 4: and independence of the individual, is where policy needs to be.
Speaker 4: And her argument was that this new user pays model,
Speaker 4: which is affecting a lot of pensioners and semi pensioners,
Speaker 4: risks having a detrimental effect in the long run, because
Speaker 4: once you make people pay for things, they're less likely
Speaker 4: to take those things out. And so what she thinks
Speaker 4: that will do is disincentivize people to seek care at
Speaker 4: home until the point that you do end up pushing
Speaker 4: everyone into residential age care. At that point they are
Speaker 4: older and sicker, and residential age care is more expensive,
Speaker 4: so it's also more expensive to the taxpayer. There has
Speaker 4: been this issue with home care package as well, this
Speaker 4: huge bottleneck because there is so much demand. The government's
Speaker 4: argument is there's not really the workforce there, and that
Speaker 4: they are bringing hundreds of thousands of home care packages online,
Speaker 4: so they're doing.
Speaker 5: Something to a system.
Speaker 4: They say it's been neglected, but you know, there are
Speaker 4: these kind of broader structural trends and challenges that I
Speaker 4: think perhaps the government talks about in a way that
Speaker 4: does frame it as a problem. I think the Age
Speaker 4: Care Inspector General, we're saying that that fatalism doesn't serve anyone,
Speaker 4: so she wants to see, you know, more investment and
Speaker 4: a rethink of that consumer co contribution model.
Speaker 1: If we do have problems with an hecare workforce, where
Speaker 1: will we get that workforce from Natasia. It's a rhetorical question.
Speaker 1: You don't have to answer it. But thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Forr relaunch twenty minutes to our migration conversation and we
Speaker 4: can keep going in circles.
Speaker 1: Hey, Natasia, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Seven Am is a daily show from Solstice Media. It's
Speaker 1: made by Ari R. Richards, Niicus Basto, Chris Dangate, Crystal Keller,
Speaker 1: Renee Auckland, Ruby Jones, Travis Evans, zoltanfet, Joe Junior and
Speaker 1: me Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley
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