Speaker 1: Live on Sky News. This is Shari.
Speaker 2: Good Evening, Caleb Bond filling in for Sharry Marxon this week.
Speaker 2: He's what's coming up tonight. A Liberal MP says what
Speaker 2: voters are thinking. The Liberal Party must abandon Net zero.
Speaker 2: Will Susan lay listen though my analysis In a moment
Speaker 2: Joe Barden is diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.
Speaker 2: I'll discuss that with Kosher Garda shortly and a major
Speaker 2: breakthrough in ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas. Is an
Speaker 2: end to the war finally in sight now, in amongst
Speaker 2: all the finger pointing and blame games and whatever else
Speaker 2: that there's been since Labour's thumping election win and consequently
Speaker 2: the Liberal Party's thumping loss, I think I read the
Speaker 2: most clear eyed and sensible analysis in The Australian today
Speaker 2: from the lnp's Garth Hamilton. He's come to the conclusion
Speaker 2: that the party has become too invested in blank Czech politics,
Speaker 2: from things like NIT zero to the NDAs Hamilton wrote,
Speaker 2: I could include defense spending on helicopters we've decommissioned and
Speaker 2: submarines we've canceled. I could speak to our management of
Speaker 2: the federation that sees the states compete only for budget blowouts,
Speaker 2: new taxes, bureaucratic latency, and record low housing approvals. The
Speaker 2: point is that we've changed, We've lost the economic argument,
Speaker 2: that is the hard truth, and this is a huge
Speaker 2: problem for the Liberal Party and the Coalition as a whole.
Speaker 2: I mean, you back or support something from a moral standpoint,
Speaker 2: like net zero or the NDAs because you think it'll
Speaker 2: look like the right thing to do, but in doing so,
Speaker 2: you are committing yourself to decades of uncontrolled spending. And
Speaker 2: it is on that count that the Liberals lose out
Speaker 2: because it means they can't point to themselves as better
Speaker 2: economic managers, which has traditionally been their strong suit. So
Speaker 2: you can try to win what you might call the
Speaker 2: Teal people with softer climate and softer social policies, but
Speaker 2: that hasn't really worked because you've only won one seat,
Speaker 2: and that was more to do with a good candidate
Speaker 2: in Tim Wilson than anything else. And you may will
Speaker 2: actually lose another seat to another Teal which we'll talk
Speaker 2: about a little bit later. And then at the same
Speaker 2: time you lose people, and there are plenty of them.
Speaker 2: In fact, arguably a majority of Australians who say, well,
Speaker 2: this mob is not really that different to that mob,
Speaker 2: so why would I bother changing the manager. I mean,
Speaker 2: you're both taking us to a trillion dollars of debt,
Speaker 2: so really, what's the difference. And of course the things
Speaker 2: that were different, like nuclear energy were hidden away. On
Speaker 2: net zero, Hamilton wrote, what I do know is that
Speaker 2: I cannot support any policy that demands a blank check
Speaker 2: and defers the costs of today onto the taxpayers of tomorrow.
Speaker 2: On how the Liberal Party ended up in such a malaise,
Speaker 2: he wrote, the best thing about Peter Dutton was that
Speaker 2: he brought peace and stability to our party. The worst
Speaker 2: thing about Peter Dutton was that he brought peace and
Speaker 2: stability to our part. We needed to rid ourselves of
Speaker 2: some of that baggage. We needed to have a few
Speaker 2: internal policy fights to test our resolve. Thomas Jefferson believed
Speaker 2: every generation needs a new revolution, and I believe the
Speaker 2: new generation of Liberals need that too. And he's clear
Speaker 2: that he doesn't want to relitigate the past. Mistakes have
Speaker 2: been made. We all know that. But the Liberal Party
Speaker 2: now needs to have the fights that it never really
Speaker 2: had after it lost government. In twenty twenty two. We're
Speaker 2: a center right party. He writes. If we move towards
Speaker 2: smaller government, balanced budgets, the individual above the state, we
Speaker 2: will be headed in the right direction and Australians with
Speaker 2: a mind to follow us, mind to tomorrow sorry, will
Speaker 2: follow us. This won't be an easy path, and I
Speaker 2: have no doubt we've many policy fights ahead, but it's
Speaker 2: time to acknowledge the peace the Liberal Party enjoyed in
Speaker 2: the last term, the unity and stability we praised ourselves for,
Speaker 2: came at a cost, and so it's time to get
Speaker 2: serious now. I mean, there are clearly divisions still. Susan
Speaker 2: Lee only won the leadership by four votes. So have
Speaker 2: it out, fight, knock your heads together, come up with
Speaker 2: something that actually makes sense. People couldn't really give two
Speaker 2: hoops about left or right, or up or down or
Speaker 2: anything else. They just want good policy that makes them
Speaker 2: feel better off now. Robert Menzies set out in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four in his We Believe Statement, that liberals believe in,
Speaker 2: amongst other things, the individual liberty, that the class war
Speaker 2: is a false war. That improved living standards depend on
Speaker 2: high productivity and efficient service, that economic power and policy
Speaker 2: are not designed to control people's lives. The great human
Speaker 2: freedoms they believe in, and religious and racial sorry tolerance
Speaker 2: among our citizens, and they are all as noble and
Speaker 2: relevant today as they were then. And that is what
Speaker 2: the Liberal Party has to BELI. It is their mission statement,
Speaker 2: straight from their founder. Now there are some who think
Speaker 2: the answer to the Liberal Party is to drag it
Speaker 2: further to the left to become effectively the Teals, But
Speaker 2: there are two problems with that. One, it won't work
Speaker 2: because the Teals already exist, and it wasn't the inner
Speaker 2: city where the Liberals' hemorrhage seats at this election. It
Speaker 2: was in the suburbs where the battlers live. You won't
Speaker 2: win battlers back by going all ev Climatista on them. Two,
Speaker 2: if the Liberal and National Coalition breaks up, which is
Speaker 2: very much on the table, then the Nats are never
Speaker 2: going to come back and join with a party that
Speaker 2: has moved its ethos even further away from them, further
Speaker 2: than they are now. And the Nationals, by the way,
Speaker 2: haven't lost a lower House seat since two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: So if the Libs wanted a mate to help them
Speaker 2: form government and that's what they've always needed from the Nationals.
Speaker 2: Then the Nats would have some serious demands to make,
Speaker 2: just as they will now. The coalition going dropping NED
Speaker 2: zero is not reckless and nor is it a mass
Speaker 2: vote killer. People are now far more concerned about the
Speaker 2: cost of living than they are about climate change or
Speaker 2: anything else. Even young people have been hit by reality
Speaker 2: to some degree. Mission Australia's twenty twenty four Youth Survey
Speaker 2: found fifty six percent of respondents age fifteen to nineteen
Speaker 2: were concerned about the cost of living number one, making
Speaker 2: it far and away the most important issue, if not
Speaker 2: climate change in the environment of its perch, which was
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three the top concern for forty four
Speaker 2: percent of young people. Last year it dropped to twenty
Speaker 2: seven percent. And this was pretty funny too. A quality
Speaker 2: and discrimination was knocked out of the top four issues
Speaker 2: for young people, replaced by violence, safety and crime. What
Speaker 2: more do you need to know about where the electorate
Speaker 2: is even young people that we're told the Liberal Party
Speaker 2: needs to win back, and yes they do, but the
Speaker 2: fact is you don't win elections by looking like the
Speaker 2: other guy. You can't just price match every policy like
Speaker 2: it's a whipper snipper at Bunnings. You need to be
Speaker 2: different and you need to have a vision for the future,
Speaker 2: a better.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I must say it's been positive, if not a little amusing,
Speaker 2: to see so many media outlets now waking up to
Speaker 2: the reality that the illicit tobacco market has exploded into
Speaker 2: a runaway success for organized crime. Now regular viewers and
Speaker 2: readers will know that I've been banging on about this
Speaker 2: four years, that the price of legal cigarettes is far
Speaker 2: too high due to extortionate tax that the federal government
Speaker 2: charges on tobacco. I mean the tax on cigarettes has
Speaker 2: tripled in a decade, from forty seven cents per stick
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen to a dollar forty today. I mean,
Speaker 2: an average packet of sigis will cost you in the
Speaker 2: order of fifty dollars. It's just outrageous, and it has
Speaker 2: precious little to do with health. It's because the government
Speaker 2: wants to squeeze as much money as it can out
Speaker 2: of poor old smokers. And I warned that that would
Speaker 2: lead to a booming illegal market, and of course that
Speaker 2: is exactly what's happened. You can buy an illegal packet
Speaker 2: of diaries in almost any dodgy tobacco, hordes of which
Speaker 2: keep popping up across the country every week for less
Speaker 2: than twenty bucks, and the war between the various gangs
Speaker 2: to control this market has already killed at least two people.
Speaker 2: An innocent woman, Cape Tangney, was killed in Melbourne earlier
Speaker 2: this year after thugs involved in illicit tobacco fire bombed
Speaker 2: the wrong house and gangland figure Sam Abdul Rahim, known
Speaker 2: as the Punisher, who was allegedly involved in the illicit
Speaker 2: tobacco trade. He tried to muscle in so the other
Speaker 2: players were after him, was executed in January. Now sixty
Speaker 2: Minutes and four Corners both ran investigations within a day
Speaker 2: of each other a couple of months ago. Today, it
Speaker 2: was the Sydney Morning Herald which pointed out that there
Speaker 2: are now twenty odd tobacco shops on King Street in
Speaker 2: Utown in Sydney, compared to just a handful a decade ago,
Speaker 2: which is odd seeing is that fewer than one in
Speaker 2: ten people smoke now compared to vastly bore a decade ago.
Speaker 2: And the article notes that while Melbourne has been the
Speaker 2: center of most of the violence in the illicit cigarette trade,
Speaker 2: Sydney has had two alleged tobacco related fire bombings this
Speaker 2: month in Auburn and Mount Pritchard, and police are worried
Speaker 2: about where things are headed. The war has spread into
Speaker 2: South Australia too. Again, I told you so. I mean,
Speaker 2: there was no way it was simply going to stop
Speaker 2: in Melbourne without the illegal market being stopped in its tracks.
Speaker 2: And the only way to do that is to stop
Speaker 2: taxing it so much, so much that it turns people
Speaker 2: to the illicit product. I mean, they're not doing it
Speaker 2: because they want to be petty criminals. They're doing it
Speaker 2: because they're addicted and they can't afford the legal one.
Speaker 2: What do you expect them to do? Even people within
Speaker 2: the Victorian Police are now asking the federal government why
Speaker 2: they can't at least freeze the tax.
Speaker 4: Jason Kelly from Victoria, Please, mister, thank you for the presentation.
Speaker 4: A lot of members of the community just don't understand
Speaker 4: why we can't pause the tax or at least reduce
Speaker 4: the tax, because the illicit market and organized crime are
Speaker 4: really reaping the benefits.
Speaker 5: And it's a really tough one. I get that. So
Speaker 5: the difficulty we have with that proposal involves raising the
Speaker 5: white flag on this question and basically allowing criminals to
Speaker 5: dictate the legal price and the revenue arrangements that the
Speaker 5: Commonwealth would have.
Speaker 2: The SMAH said that nearly forty percent of tobacco consumption
Speaker 2: across Australia was illicit last year, according to an Industry
Speaker 2: Commission report by FDI Consulting, an increase of twenty eight
Speaker 2: point six percent on twenty twenty three. A whopping seventeen
Speaker 2: point six billion dollars of revenue has been wiped off
Speaker 2: the federal budgets. Forward estimates all lost tobacco tax in
Speaker 2: the past year alone. The Media Economic Update, which of
Speaker 2: course we got at the end of last year, downgraded
Speaker 2: tobacco excise revenue by two point eight billion this financial
Speaker 2: year and ten point seven billion over the four years
Speaker 2: to twenty seven twenty eight, ostensibly because so much of
Speaker 2: the market is being lost to the untaxed product pushed
Speaker 2: by organized crime gangs. March federal budget that wiped another
Speaker 2: one point three billion dollars off this year's tobacco tax
Speaker 2: and another six point nine billion to twenty eight twenty nine,
Speaker 2: not because they've stopped smoking, because they found a cheaper
Speaker 2: product that's funding organized crime and all. It's grizzly activity.
Speaker 2: So I'm glad that people are starting to wake up.
Speaker 2: But this has been coming four years. I've been talking
Speaker 2: about it for years, and the federal government has done
Speaker 2: nothing to stop it. They've kept doing exactly the same thing,
Speaker 2: increasing the tax and then wondering why it gets worse.
Speaker 2: Let's take that to my panel tonight, Sky and News
Speaker 2: contributor Joe Hildebrand and host Steve Price. Steve, of course,
Speaker 2: you've borne the brunt of most of this down in Melbourne.
Speaker 2: I mean more than one hundred fire bombings you've had
Speaker 2: at tobacconists. You've got insurance companies now refusing to ensure
Speaker 2: people who live in buildings that have a tobacconist down
Speaker 2: the bottom of them, and the federal government just won't
Speaker 2: move on this. It is so stupid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, they don't understand.
Speaker 6: I mean there's a fire bombing of a tobacco shop
Speaker 6: every night pretty much in Melbourne. And that's been going on, Caleb,
Speaker 6: I now think probably for four or five years. I mean,
Speaker 6: it is bloody dangerous. And I tell you what, there's
Speaker 6: shopping strips. I mean, you mentioned how many of these
Speaker 6: tobacco joints are around up and down say Chapel Street
Speaker 6: in windsorom Brand. Every second shops a tobacconist, and you
Speaker 6: could just walk in there and obviously clearly purchase an
Speaker 6: illegal product.
Speaker 1: Now, the police have not.
Speaker 6: Got the resources to shut those shops down. They don't
Speaker 6: seem to have the will either, and the state government
Speaker 6: certainly doesn't have the will neither.
Speaker 1: There's camera.
Speaker 6: It's a dangerous criminal activity that they just refuse to
Speaker 6: accept as happening. And you're quite right, we could all
Speaker 6: see this coming. I mean, who's going to go into
Speaker 6: the Ida or to Woolies and pay fifty seven dollars
Speaker 6: for a packet of cigarettes. No one's going to do
Speaker 6: that if they know they could walk next door and
Speaker 6: get the same packet, as you said, for twenty bucks.
Speaker 2: And I feel so sorry, Joe for the states, because
Speaker 2: you know, the states get saddled with having to enforce
Speaker 2: all of this, but it's not their fault.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The federal government is so greedy that they say, well,
Speaker 2: we want more and more tax, But the reality now
Speaker 2: is the tax is going backwards because everyone is buying
Speaker 2: the illegal stuff. Anyway, you would think even from the
Speaker 2: bottom line, the budgetary bottom line, they'd start to go on,
Speaker 2: hang on, this isn't working well.
Speaker 7: As the good Minister said, you know, we can't let
Speaker 7: organized crime dicta comphouse revenue menage is the government which
Speaker 7: I think actually so of bells the cut on this
Speaker 7: that this is a huge money spinner for the government.
Speaker 3: It used to be.
Speaker 7: I remember when all these taxes and the plane packaging
Speaker 7: and everything was brought in, back when I think Tanya
Speaker 7: plipper Set was Health Minister, and the argument was that
Speaker 7: that tobacco actually cost the country, cost the tax payer
Speaker 7: so much money in medical in medical expenses, hospital stays,
Speaker 7: you know, people being off from work because they're sick.
Speaker 7: And I remember noticing a few years ago in one
Speaker 7: of the budget lockups that the amount of money that
Speaker 7: the government was now getting from tobacco xcize was now
Speaker 7: outpacing how much smoking actually cost the community.
Speaker 3: So from then on it obviously became a cash cow.
Speaker 7: I think another problem for the government is that at
Speaker 7: the exact same time as the tobacco taxes were skyrocketing,
Speaker 7: they were cracking down on vaping as well, which is
Speaker 7: how a lot of people were because I think a
Speaker 7: lot of the reason it's going down is because some
Speaker 7: people are quitting. But again, the easiest way for pretty
Speaker 7: much every smoker I know to quit has been to
Speaker 7: transition to vaping, and they were making that harder putting
Speaker 7: up more regulatory hurdles at the same time.
Speaker 3: So it was a perfect store.
Speaker 2: It's just stupid stuff.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 8: Of course, I talked earlier about the sorry stell what
Speaker 8: happened to the crackdown on vapes, these things that come
Speaker 8: into the country that are supposed to be illegal. At
Speaker 8: Mark Butler announced, I don't see any crackdown on vapes.
Speaker 2: But this is the thing as well. They missed a
Speaker 2: trick there because they could have regulated it in the
Speaker 2: same way they do cigarettes and said, well, we understand
Speaker 2: that the illegal cigarette market already exists. Of course there's
Speaker 2: going to be an illegal vape market, but they said, no, no,
Speaker 2: we'll ban it. It'll all be fine.
Speaker 7: Work, don't smoke illegal cigarettes, buy, doesn't regulated, vote exactly,
Speaker 7: And that was.
Speaker 2: And the market was doing that, but the governments of
Speaker 2: everything they touched, they bagger up. Now. The other thing
Speaker 2: I talked about at the top of the show, of course,
Speaker 2: is that the Liberal Party and how they're going they
Speaker 2: could decide what their philosophies will be going forward, and
Speaker 2: it's interesting to see the divide. I talked about what
Speaker 2: Garth Hamilton had to say and and I think it's
Speaker 2: some of the best analysis I've seen so far. On
Speaker 2: the other side, this was Senator Jane hu mo onscar
Speaker 2: Us today.
Speaker 9: I have a personal opinion on that, of course, and
Speaker 9: that would be that the election has sent us a
Speaker 9: very clear message what it is that they want in
Speaker 9: their government. Abandoning net zero. I don't necessarily think is
Speaker 9: consistent with that.
Speaker 2: I mean, Steve, do we really believe that everyone went
Speaker 2: out and voted for labor because they couldn't be at
Speaker 2: the idea of net zero not existing? I don't think
Speaker 2: they had anything to do with it.
Speaker 6: No one's marching in the street for net zero. I
Speaker 6: don't care what any labor minister says or what Chris
Speaker 6: Bowen rattles on about. It's simply that's not the issue.
Speaker 6: I mean, the Liberal Party you got to wake up
Speaker 6: to themselves, and Jane and Hume needs to as well.
Speaker 6: I mean, have a look at the train wreckage around
Speaker 6: the country. I mean, put to one side for a
Speaker 6: moment that awful election loss and how devastating that was.
Speaker 6: Hav A look at Wa the Liberal Party basically doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: I got.
Speaker 6: They've got two or three members in the state parliament.
Speaker 6: Basil's emplast is trying to fix that up. In South
Speaker 6: Australia and Adelaide, the federal Liberal Party don't have one
Speaker 6: seat in yours of my old hometown Color. I mean
Speaker 6: that is just something that growing up in South Australia,
Speaker 6: you could never imagine.
Speaker 1: That that would be the case. In Victoria, the state oppositions.
Speaker 2: They pretty much lost every booth in Adelaide, let alone
Speaker 2: every seat, which is just extraordinary.
Speaker 6: I mean I grew up in the seat of Sturt
Speaker 6: that was always a Liberal seat. I mean Adelaide had
Speaker 6: a divide, as you know, the eastern suburbs and the
Speaker 6: inner southern suburbs were always Liberal territory Port Adelaide and
Speaker 6: the western suburbs were different.
Speaker 1: But I mean the.
Speaker 6: Victorian state opposition they spent all of their time throwing
Speaker 6: more a deeming out of the party and not worrying
Speaker 6: about trying to win an election. Dan Andrews won three
Speaker 6: elections in a row in Victoria. The Liberals never got
Speaker 6: within a sniff, So it's not hard to work out
Speaker 6: what's gone wrong here. The Liberal brand is completely stuffed
Speaker 6: and if they don't realize that themselves, how is it
Speaker 6: ever going to be fixed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the point, Joe, is that it's not just
Speaker 2: about dropping net zero or having net zero, it's about
Speaker 2: the effect of doing so. And if you can say
Speaker 2: by dropping net zero, we can wind back whatever plans
Speaker 2: they might be for renewable energy, whatever they can sell
Speaker 2: and say, look, this will result in a reduction in
Speaker 2: your power bills for instance, that is the point of
Speaker 2: going down this road, right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I thought it was a really interesting article by
Speaker 7: Garth Hamilton. But to be honest, I think even talking
Speaker 7: about net zero is a problem for the Liberal party.
Speaker 7: I think the reason why this election was such an
Speaker 7: emphatic win for Labor is because Labor moved to and
Speaker 7: held the center. And I know that's something that a
Speaker 7: lot of people on the right refuse to believe, but
Speaker 7: that is what was.
Speaker 2: The center really worried about net zero.
Speaker 3: They don't care either way. This is the whole point.
Speaker 7: So the mistake that both the left and the right
Speaker 7: make on this issue, just as they make on indigenous issues,
Speaker 7: is thinking that everybody else cares about them as much
Speaker 7: as they do. One side cares about them in a
Speaker 7: very very positive way, the other side cares about them
Speaker 7: in a very negative way, and you can swap them
Speaker 7: around whatever. The point is, the vast majority in the people,
Speaker 7: people of middle in the middle, do not give a
Speaker 7: rats And that is why when Peter Dutton and the
Speaker 7: Liberal Party started arguing about Welcomes to Country in the
Speaker 7: last week of that campaign, I was just going, for
Speaker 7: the love of God, it's already dead.
Speaker 3: What are you doing?
Speaker 2: That was my point.
Speaker 7: We're talking about most people don't aren't marching in the
Speaker 7: street for welcomes to Country or marching the street against
Speaker 7: Welcome to Country. They just want a party that is
Speaker 7: going to fix their kitchen table problems, and whichever party
Speaker 7: has the most credibility, whichever party they believe can do that,
Speaker 7: they will vote for.
Speaker 3: They don't care what color it is.
Speaker 7: And Peter Dutton lacked credibility and the Colors lack credibility
Speaker 7: in terms of their policy plans and the detail around it.
Speaker 7: And at the same time they were talking about other stuff,
Speaker 7: cultural issues that no one cared about.
Speaker 2: And that was my point is people don't really care
Speaker 2: about left and right, but they care about good policy
Speaker 2: that it makes them feel like they're better off. And
Speaker 2: if you can sell the message that by dropping it
Speaker 2: zero you can make power bills lower, that's where you
Speaker 2: go with it. But we'll see what they do. And
Speaker 2: of course they're still got to worry about whether the
Speaker 2: Nats want to be coalition with them either, and that's
Speaker 2: one of the things that they will be asking about now. Joe,
Speaker 2: you had a peace out in the Telly today talking
Speaker 2: about exactly how much I know you can't believe I'm
Speaker 2: giving you a g out of you, but talking about
Speaker 2: exactly how much Labor hates the Greens. And you can
Speaker 2: understand from many perspectives why, but your source said, when
Speaker 2: a matter before the Senate is poised almost evenly, the
Speaker 2: Greens are powerful for ten minutes. They can't create anything,
Speaker 2: but they sure can kill things. And this will be
Speaker 2: the question now that they have the absolute balance of
Speaker 2: power in the Senate, what are they going to do
Speaker 2: with it? And how does Labor work with them.
Speaker 7: Well, it's not necessarily that the Greens have increased their power.
Speaker 7: Labor has actually picked up Senate seats, So the fear
Speaker 7: that I think people on the right has is that
Speaker 7: Labor just needs the Greens and nobody else, So there's
Speaker 7: still a whole bunch of cross benches. And indeed, the
Speaker 7: Coalition if they do not want the Greens to be
Speaker 7: dictating policy terms to Labor, and I can promise you
Speaker 7: Labor is not Labor will tell them to go jump
Speaker 7: more times than not. Then the Coalition can very simply
Speaker 7: do what it refused to do in the last Parliament
Speaker 7: and negotiate with Labor on those same bills to make
Speaker 7: sure that they don't get LEFTI fied or GREENO fied,
Speaker 7: or redified or tritified by the Greens, because the Greens
Speaker 7: they're terrible negotiators anyway.
Speaker 3: They are obstructionists.
Speaker 7: They did terrible damage by blocking the housing policy, and
Speaker 7: they are also a party that depends upon progress not
Speaker 7: being made. And this is why Labor SMARTlab people absolutely
Speaker 7: despise them.
Speaker 3: People at the top of the party despise them.
Speaker 7: The PM despises them because all what they actually want
Speaker 7: is a permanent state where people can be upset angry
Speaker 7: about stuff, so they go out and protest and they
Speaker 7: lodge their vote with a protest party. Any progress that
Speaker 7: actually gets paid hurts the Greens. So that's why they're
Speaker 7: so utterly disingenuine, disingenuous, and why I can promise you
Speaker 7: that labor genuinely hates them.
Speaker 2: Now, Steve, we're getting the budget down your way in
Speaker 2: Victoria tomorrow, and then the new treasure of Jaqueline Simes,
Speaker 2: of course, who've famously got her staff to tell treasury
Speaker 2: staff not to use economic terms because she couldn't understand them.
Speaker 2: So we know that it's all going to go really well,
Speaker 2: but you won't believe what they're trotting out now to say, Look,
Speaker 2: you've got to stick with us tag a over this.
Speaker 10: From the first of January next year, if kids under
Speaker 10: the age of eighteen, well, kids will be able to
Speaker 10: travel free anywhere across Victoria thanks to the responsible decision
Speaker 10: making we have done as part of setting tomorrow's state budget.
Speaker 2: So we find out today that the debt won't have
Speaker 2: a two in front of it, so it'll be under
Speaker 2: two hundred billion, so that's fantastic. But we'll give the
Speaker 2: kids free public transport and that'll say Victoria.
Speaker 6: Steve, well, some of our Telvis Center, Allen and Jacqueline
Speaker 6: Simes that kids don't pay to write on public transport anyway.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's all great to give them free. I
Speaker 6: catch trams and trains around all the time, and none
Speaker 6: of these kids pay. They don't tap their my key on.
Speaker 6: They just get on the tram and get off the
Speaker 6: other end. They wouldn't give a rats whether it was
Speaker 6: free or not, because they don't pay now and on
Speaker 6: the debt, I mean ten years ago, I looked this
Speaker 6: up for you today, Caleb. Ten years ago, the Victorian
Speaker 6: government debt in twenty fourteen fifteen was twenty two point
Speaker 6: three billion dollars. As of twenty twenty four to twenty
Speaker 6: five this year or twenty five twenty six, it's going
Speaker 6: to be.
Speaker 2: One hundred and sixty eight point five.
Speaker 1: Billion in ten years.
Speaker 2: Fantastic.
Speaker 7: Well, a quick little tip for the Victorian by the way,
Speaker 7: if you're going to deliver a budget handout to win
Speaker 7: the next election, try giving it to people who are
Speaker 7: old enough to vote.
Speaker 6: I know, is it is a very good We'll hang
Speaker 6: on so no, no it's not, No, it's not.
Speaker 1: The pearents are the ones.
Speaker 6: That pay for this card that the kids currently have
Speaker 6: to pay for to catch the tram and the train.
Speaker 1: To school.
Speaker 6: It's about seven hundred bucks per family, but they don't
Speaker 6: pay anyone.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, isn't that what you do with
Speaker 2: your pocket money. I was expected to do that with
Speaker 2: my pocket money if I wanted to get around on
Speaker 2: public transport. But I told this story last night on
Speaker 2: air that I was on a train from Warregal to
Speaker 2: Melbourne a few months ago and the inspector Bloke, well,
Speaker 2: I've got to make who lives in Warregor And Inspector
Speaker 2: Bloke comes down on the train and he says to
Speaker 2: these kids, you know, stop being so rowdy. And they
Speaker 2: said to him, look, we don't have Marque cards and
Speaker 2: he said, I know that, but please don't vape on
Speaker 2: my train. So that's where we've seen you. I think
Speaker 2: that's exactly that's where we seem to be get. Steve Joe,
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your time. Now, the Prime
Speaker 2: Minister is back to his favorite past time, which is
Speaker 2: holding court with foreign leaders, this time over at the
Speaker 2: Pope's inauguration, the first Australian PM to go to the
Speaker 2: inaugural mass since we established diplomatic relations with the Holy
Speaker 2: See in the seventies. By the way, and our but
Speaker 2: easy clearly charmed the European Union because they're now keen
Speaker 2: to strike a new defense deal with Australia. He was
Speaker 2: European Commission President Ursula Vondaline meeting with Alban Easy.
Speaker 11: We do not only see you as a trading partner,
Speaker 11: but we see you as a strategic partner.
Speaker 1: We would be very pleased if.
Speaker 8: We could to develop such as security and Defense Partnership tool.
Speaker 2: To help break down what this is supposed to look like,
Speaker 2: what this deal might look like. I'm joined now by
Speaker 2: a Director of Strategic Analysis Australia, Michael Shubridge. Michael, based
Speaker 2: on what we've heard so far, and we know that
Speaker 2: the EU has done deals with a number of other
Speaker 2: nations recently, what would they be expecting of us and
Speaker 2: what should we be expecting of them?
Speaker 12: Well, Caleb, I think the EU's expectations are really very simple.
Speaker 12: They would be expecting Australia to have looked at what
Speaker 12: they agreed with Japan and South Korea recently, and they've
Speaker 12: just signed another defense and Security Corporation agreement with the
Speaker 12: UK and it's a broad framework that says let's work
Speaker 12: more closely together. The mystifying thing to me is that
Speaker 12: The Prime Minister seemed to be either very badly briefed
Speaker 12: or not have remembered what the brief would have told him,
Speaker 12: because he sounded like he was mystified by the whole thing,
Speaker 12: and it was at a very early stage. It's very
Speaker 12: likely that the text that the EU would propose would
Speaker 12: look almost exactly like the publicly available texts that they've
Speaker 12: signed with Japan and South Korea, just with replace all
Speaker 12: putting Australia instead.
Speaker 2: If that's the case, an elbow's not across it. I mean,
Speaker 2: what was he talking to them about. What was the
Speaker 2: point he went all the way there? Surely he went
Speaker 2: there to do a deal.
Speaker 12: Well, I think this is the problem really when he
Speaker 12: does these visits, he seems to think just having the
Speaker 12: meeting is the out come, and maybe agreeing to meet again.
Speaker 12: And I've certainly met plenty of diplomats in our Foreign
Speaker 12: Affairs department that think meetings are the outcome. But really,
Speaker 12: when the Prime Minister talked about it, he talked about
Speaker 12: maybe we have negotiations on it within NATO. Well, NATO
Speaker 12: is an entirely different organization to the EU. It just
Speaker 12: sounds disinterested in security.
Speaker 2: And also nothing to do with US. It should be
Speaker 2: noted I've often said that I hate meetings. I think
Speaker 2: that the preserve of people who want to look like
Speaker 2: they're being productive without actually being productive, because you can
Speaker 2: gasbag about stuff that could have just been put in
Speaker 2: an email. But to the broader defense policy hearing, you know,
Speaker 2: I guess we can't just rely on the US anymore.
Speaker 2: And of course the moves that Trump has made in
Speaker 2: recent months has forced outfits like the EU to look
Speaker 2: after themselves a little bit more and increase their spending.
Speaker 2: Same with the UK, etc. We're no different.
Speaker 12: Well, that's right, So that there could be some meat
Speaker 12: around this EO Australia Security Corporation as the EU starts
Speaker 12: spending one hundred and fifty billion euros and new fund
Speaker 12: they've just put together, that could be some opportunities for
Speaker 12: Australian defense companies.
Speaker 1: But I think we've got.
Speaker 12: To keep pretty low expectations about what Europe and Australia
Speaker 12: might do together. One reason that occurs to me why
Speaker 12: mister Albanezi was reluctant to even talk about this is
Speaker 12: if he had read the agreements that have been ended
Speaker 12: between the EU with Japan and South Korea. He would
Speaker 12: see that they're agreeing that really Russia and China are
Speaker 12: a common challenge for Europe and our part of the world,
Speaker 12: and he wants to run a mile from that characterization.
Speaker 2: Why would you run a mile from that characterize that? Well,
Speaker 2: we know why to pander to China, but honestly, if
Speaker 2: you want to protect your country, we can't run a
Speaker 2: mile from that characterization. We know it's going on. It's
Speaker 2: something we all have to stand up against. And how
Speaker 2: could we expect allies, be they in Europe or the US,
Speaker 2: or the UK or anyone else, to stand by us
Speaker 2: if we're not willing to acknowledge the same things that
Speaker 2: they are. Well, I agree with you, Caleb.
Speaker 12: And really, if mister Albanezi was thinking security was important
Speaker 12: and wanted to build a relationship with the EU, he
Speaker 12: could have pulled out a draft text where he had
Speaker 12: written Australia instead of Japan and said we'd be ready
Speaker 12: to sign this today. But instead we hear about it's
Speaker 12: at a very early stage and we'll have further chats
Speaker 12: and am I go on for some time. It's all
Speaker 12: just the way he behaved in his first term. If
Speaker 12: I can have meetings and more words with no outcomes.
Speaker 1: That's a good day.
Speaker 2: Just very quickly before we go, Michael, Speaking of meetings,
Speaker 2: Elbow also met with a lot of mis Zelenski and
Speaker 2: discussed Oscar Jenkins, of course, the Aussie who's been sentenced
Speaker 2: in Russia. What should we expect out of that.
Speaker 12: Well, I'll tell you what. If mister Abenezi could actually
Speaker 12: deliver the forty nine old tanks that we've promised to
Speaker 12: give Ukraine in October last year, he might get President
Speaker 12: Zelenski's attention and full cooperation.
Speaker 2: So I think that'd be a.
Speaker 12: Good thing for him to do. But really, there is
Speaker 12: some possibility that Oscar Jenkins could be rolled into a
Speaker 12: Ukraine Russia prisoner swap that happened with some British nationals
Speaker 12: earlier in the war. But I really think it's about
Speaker 12: engaging with Ukraine, supporting them and delivering on our promises
Speaker 12: like getting tanks there in under a year.
Speaker 2: Indeed, Michael, thank you so much for your time. Still
Speaker 2: to come. Labour Slam's criticism of their capital gains tax
Speaker 2: as a scare campaign, I'll tell you why that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: But first, Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis since shock Waves through
Speaker 2: American politics. Kosher Garda will join me live next.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: We learned today that former US President Joe Biden has
Speaker 2: been diagnosed with a quote unquote aggressive form of prostate
Speaker 2: cancer that spread to his bones. Donald Trump posted online
Speaker 2: Milania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden's
Speaker 2: recent medical diagnosis. We extend our warmest and best wishes
Speaker 2: to form a first Lady Jill Biden and the family,
Speaker 2: and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery. With me.
Speaker 2: Now is Sky and news contributor Kosher Gada Kosher. What's
Speaker 2: been the reaction across America to this news?
Speaker 13: Where to be douquieleb Certainly, as you said, it's shark
Speaker 13: waves around the country just because of the nature and
Speaker 13: elite stage of the diagnosis where it's metastasized for his bones.
Speaker 13: I think, you know, the first reaction is genuine sympathy,
Speaker 13: bipartisan words of support from Donald Trump as you just
Speaker 13: played there, to Kamala Harris and everyone in between. Because
Speaker 13: these kinds of events sadly are relatable to many people
Speaker 13: can sympathize with it on a human level, and it
Speaker 13: has a way I guess one silver lining is it
Speaker 13: has a way of bringing a very divided country together,
Speaker 13: if for a brief moment. The other side of it,
Speaker 13: of course, is that given who Biden was and is,
Speaker 13: naturally there is a political element to the story, and
Speaker 13: that is that this does further tarnish his legacy. For sure.
Speaker 13: This is going to be one more thing of how
Speaker 13: he's remembered that he had this and various health conditions
Speaker 13: festering when he decided to run, and everything that went
Speaker 13: down from there. It's raising questions about transparency, who knew what,
Speaker 13: when did they know it? And this wasn't kept or
Speaker 13: this was kept for the American people and the implications
Speaker 13: of that. And there's also a little bit around policy,
Speaker 13: not so much because of the cancer, but the cognitive
Speaker 13: decline on various documents that he signed, from executive orders
Speaker 13: to pardons. Do they have legal legitimacy is a question
Speaker 13: that people are raising whether or not anything comes of that.
Speaker 13: So it's certainly created a bit of a firestorm politically.
Speaker 13: In addition to the human aspect of.
Speaker 2: It, Well, you'd have decides far from a conspiracy theory
Speaker 2: to wonder why if he's been diagnosed with stage four
Speaker 2: prostate cancer now, so it's well advanced. So he absolutely
Speaker 2: had it towards the end of his presidency. You are
Speaker 2: the president of the United States, so you would have
Speaker 2: the best doctors and medical advice and whatever available to you.
Speaker 2: How did they not pick this up?
Speaker 13: Absolutely? And I think that is the elephant in the room.
Speaker 13: It's very hard to believe that they didn't because they're
Speaker 13: constantly being monitored, and obviously he was under the care
Speaker 13: of many doctors. There were Parkinson's doctors at the White
Speaker 13: House logs show had been visiting for a while. Obviously
Speaker 13: he would have been having regular physicals as well. So
Speaker 13: I think that is an inconvenient reality that is out there,
Speaker 13: and it is the Democrat Party and the media, who
Speaker 13: are already suffering from all time low levels of trust,
Speaker 13: have certainly taken a big hit tonight as the story
Speaker 13: continues to unfold.
Speaker 2: Indeed, and it's sad as well because of all the cancers,
Speaker 2: to have prostate cancer, if it's found early, is very
Speaker 2: easy one to treat these days. Now, Israel seems open
Speaker 2: to ending the war with Hamas, that is, if the
Speaker 2: terrorist organization agrees to put down their arms and going
Speaker 2: to egg style, and it's a stack shift from Nitan
Speaker 2: Yahoo because he's previously said that Israel will keep fighting
Speaker 2: until Hamas is completely extinct. But they've lifted the aid band,
Speaker 2: so there's there's food and drink and whatever going into
Speaker 2: the place now, and they seem to be softening their
Speaker 2: tone a little.
Speaker 13: Seems to be that way, though twenty four hours is
Speaker 13: a lifetime in a war zone, so much more wood
Speaker 13: to chop. Still, there's two dynamics happening in real time.
Speaker 13: So one, the Israelis have intensified their military operation, both
Speaker 13: with the ground game and air strikes. Several Hamas leaders
Speaker 13: reportedly were taken out over the weekend, and coupling that
Speaker 13: with the blockhead of food and water and everything else
Speaker 13: is really putting maximum pressure on them. And simultaneously, the
Speaker 13: diplomatic its continue to be underway, though they haven't always
Speaker 13: been successful. That is continuing with the US playing a
Speaker 13: mediation role and other actors from Europe and else where
Speaker 13: are coming in there and trying to basically negotiate primarily
Speaker 13: release of the remaining hostages in exchange for a ceasefire.
Speaker 13: So those two dynamics, it sounds like, at least based
Speaker 13: on reports, there's been a bit of a breakthrough where
Speaker 13: there are certain restrictions that Hamas was not letting up
Speaker 13: on which now they are, and they've agreed to these
Speaker 13: talks in Qatar with no preconditions. And if true, then
Speaker 13: that looks like hopefully this thing is moving, the needle
Speaker 13: is moving in the right direction and moving towards some
Speaker 13: sort of seizing of this conflict, because certainly it's gone
Speaker 13: on for far longer than anybody.
Speaker 2: Wants very quickly kosher. The breaking news out of the
Speaker 2: UK ton Art is that the European Union in the
Speaker 2: UK have agreed to a post bricks at what they're
Speaker 2: calling reset deal, which appears to encompass security and defense.
Speaker 2: But the major deal, or the magic part of it
Speaker 2: that's being lauded, is a twelve year agreement to allow
Speaker 2: phishing access for a boats in UK waters. Many people
Speaker 2: might be asking what was the point of Brexit.
Speaker 13: The Brexit heres certainly are asking that and are not
Speaker 13: very happy in general, but the fishing trade in general, software,
Speaker 13: border checks, travel, all of that, and then the big
Speaker 13: thing is a European Court of Justice. The ECG apparently
Speaker 13: has some sort of sphere of influence still on domestic
Speaker 13: matters that's the one that's riled up many people on
Speaker 13: the Brexit side. I think Nigel Farage and the Reform
Speaker 13: Party are certainly going to use this to their advantage
Speaker 13: and push that it's sort of a surrender and that
Speaker 13: the deal should be much different from that, and that's
Speaker 13: going to have a big play in their political cycle.
Speaker 2: And they're already doing well, so I'm sure they won't
Speaker 2: mind a bit more ammunition. Kosher, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: As always still to come, Labour slam's criticism of their
Speaker 2: capital gains text as a scare campaign. I mean seriously
Speaker 2: more coming up with the panel after this, plenty of
Speaker 2: more to get through, so let's jump straight into it
Speaker 2: with my next panel. A Journey Media is Lisa Godard
Speaker 2: and Strategies director Cameron Milner. Now Susan Lee had an
Speaker 2: article in The Australian over the weekend mapping out what
Speaker 2: her time as opposition leader will look like and it
Speaker 2: was pretty light of policy, but I guess that's to
Speaker 2: be expected when so much is still being debated within
Speaker 2: the party. They have quite a few fights to have.
Speaker 2: Of course, I pointed out Garth Hamilton was saying earlier
Speaker 2: and it did give a few hints those such as
Speaker 2: this paragraph. We have lost the trust of women, and
Speaker 2: we have not convinced younger Australians that we have a
Speaker 2: plan to provide a fair go for their generation. We
Speaker 2: need to focus on renewing the compact we have had
Speaker 2: with Australians who live in cities, helping them deal with
Speaker 2: a rapidly changing economy and rising prices. And Cameron, she's
Speaker 2: quite right on.
Speaker 1: All of that.
Speaker 2: But the question is do you go down the road
Speaker 2: of well, we'll stick with knit zero and nothing much
Speaker 2: will change, or do you actually say we need to
Speaker 2: have a shakeup to make it look like we're not
Speaker 2: the same as the other one.
Speaker 14: Well, I think the thing too is words have kind
Speaker 14: of echoed some of men's he's forgotten people. I think
Speaker 14: there was a bit of power battlers for the verbs
Speaker 14: in there as well.
Speaker 3: So the Liberals are getting back on track.
Speaker 14: If they're going to have a huge internal fight and
Speaker 14: talk about themselves next three years, they'll lose the next election.
Speaker 14: If they get back to being the party of blow taxation,
Speaker 14: individual freedoms and as John Howard said over the weekend, aspiration,
Speaker 14: then I think they're going to be back on track,
Speaker 14: and she's talking that to language. She didn't put Alba
Speaker 14: under a lot of early pressure going forward.
Speaker 2: So she talks about having lost the trust of women.
Speaker 2: But the question is is how do you specifically win
Speaker 2: back women. You've now got a female leader, But I
Speaker 2: don't know that that in and of itself encourages women
Speaker 2: to vote for you. In some cases, you might say
Speaker 2: that it actually counts against you. Certainly anecdotally, there are
Speaker 2: plenty of women who'll say that, how do you actually
Speaker 2: regain the trust of women?
Speaker 11: Caleb, You and I can answer that tonight. We'll have
Speaker 11: jobs with the Liberal Party by tomorrow morning. What I
Speaker 11: think is that they really need to start to look
Speaker 11: at it.
Speaker 3: It's not just this women issue.
Speaker 11: We all have cost of living problems, whether you're male
Speaker 11: or female. You were out there at the grocery store.
Speaker 11: You were all suffering at that price points. I just
Speaker 11: don't think they hammered home that message hard enough and
Speaker 11: this idea. Look, it's great that Susan Lee is now
Speaker 11: the first female leader of the Liberal Party.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 11: I don't believe in quotas. I don't think that we
Speaker 11: should rejoice at the fact that we're celebrating this based
Speaker 11: on gender. However, she is there now. Whether that will
Speaker 11: be a turning point for voters and female voters, I
Speaker 11: don't know if it will. If you look to the US,
Speaker 11: if you look at the votes that Kamala Harris was
Speaker 11: getting compared to Biden, she had fewer female voters backing
Speaker 11: her in.
Speaker 3: So I don't know how much how.
Speaker 11: Much you can back in this idea that you put
Speaker 11: a woman in the leadership position and all of the
Speaker 11: women are going to follow behind like the pied piper
Speaker 11: and everyone behind her. I just don't think it's enough.
Speaker 11: They do need to come up with some policies that
Speaker 11: actually cut through and y's what she has said on
Speaker 11: the weekend. Great, but it is such high level messaging
Speaker 11: that if they don't find a way of making the
Speaker 11: average Australia and go, you know what that relates to
Speaker 11: me and I can see how that will change my
Speaker 11: life for the better, then they will stay out for
Speaker 11: the next three six years or more.
Speaker 2: And you know, I tend to agree with Peter Kreedlin,
Speaker 2: of course, who said multiple times, look that the issues
Speaker 2: that women care about are fundamentally the same issues that
Speaker 2: men care about, because we're all living in the same world,
Speaker 2: and we have the same households and the same families,
Speaker 2: so we all see the same things, and there's probably
Speaker 2: an argument to be made. You know, all the people
Speaker 2: out there don't come for me for saying it, because
Speaker 2: it is true. I'm not saying that it should be
Speaker 2: otherwise or whatever. But the reality is that women still
Speaker 2: do perform a lot more of the household duties than
Speaker 2: men do, and so you could make the argument that
Speaker 2: things like cost of living women would be even more
Speaker 2: acutely aware of because they're looking at those numbers every day. Anyway,
Speaker 2: if I can work it out, or anyone else can
Speaker 2: work it out, we'll see where we go. Now, Cameron,
Speaker 2: you're in the UK right now. You've written in The
Speaker 2: Nightly today that the UK Labor Party is a warning
Speaker 2: for Australia's Labor Party and also a ray of hope
Speaker 2: for the Liberals. Why is that.
Speaker 14: Kis Starmer and Anthony Abanze both scored about two thirds
Speaker 14: of the parliament in the most recent elections ten months
Speaker 14: on Starma though is panicking, he's soiling the sheets of government.
Speaker 14: I wrote my column today because reform went a VI
Speaker 14: election and one about six hundred and fifty seats out
Speaker 14: of sixteen hundred in local councils. So reform Nigel Faraja's
Speaker 14: party from the right has taken labor vote and taken
Speaker 14: conservative vote and built themselves as a second horse against labor.
Speaker 14: There are people in labor now talking about not being
Speaker 14: a government for two or three terms.
Speaker 3: They're talking about.
Speaker 14: Losing in four years time because red wall labor seats
Speaker 14: are going to reform and Kis Starmer is seen as
Speaker 14: someone who's weak and not up to it. That sounds
Speaker 14: familiar probably to a lot of viewers with Albanese as well.
Speaker 14: So the lesson for labor isn't it how many seats
Speaker 14: you won only two weeks ago. It's what voters think
Speaker 14: of you on a daily basis. You'll lose the trust
Speaker 14: of voters. You're going to lose the next election.
Speaker 2: Quite right now. The super tax. Newly minted Assistant treasure
Speaker 2: Daniel Malino has been trying to sell the policy. He
Speaker 2: says that he doesn't affect that many people.
Speaker 15: Well, I think at the heart of it, we're talking
Speaker 15: about accounts that have gone above a certain threshold, very
Speaker 15: very large accounts, a very small slither of accounts, and
Speaker 15: so I think what we really got here is whether
Speaker 15: or not those accounts should receive full concessional treatment or
Speaker 15: slightly less concessional treatment.
Speaker 2: And DEPITYPM Richard Marles has even gone as far as
Speaker 2: to call criticism of the policy a smear campaign.
Speaker 16: It was taken to the Australian people within the last month, So,
Speaker 16: I mean what we've seen here is the Liberals, in
Speaker 16: a desperate attempt to find something to talk about, run
Speaker 16: a smear campaign in relation to this. But fundamentally, this
Speaker 16: is a policy which has been it is something.
Speaker 1: Period of time.
Speaker 2: Oh, desperate smear campaign. The reality is it's not indexed.
Speaker 2: They could index it if they wanted to, but they're
Speaker 2: not going to index it. So the three million dollars,
Speaker 2: as we know, a twenty two year old today on
Speaker 2: an average wage, you throw on an average wage for
Speaker 2: the rest of their life, Lisa will have three million
Speaker 2: dollars in this souper by the time they are sixty four.
Speaker 2: If it was really about being fair, it indicts it.
Speaker 2: You can't call it a smear campaign.
Speaker 11: No. And the way they're getting through with this messaging
Speaker 11: is to put in us and them, So don't worry
Speaker 11: about it. It's just the rich end of town. It's
Speaker 11: the top end of town. Average Josies don't need to
Speaker 11: worry about it. The smear campaign should have come from
Speaker 11: the Liberal Party during the election campaign. That's when they
Speaker 11: should have made this front and center and explained to
Speaker 11: the younger voters. So they're trying to win over, this
Speaker 11: is how this will impact you as you put your
Speaker 11: money into supernow by the time you retire, this is
Speaker 11: how this will impact you.
Speaker 3: But they didn't do it.
Speaker 11: They didn't play the long game and explain it to
Speaker 11: the younger voters that they need to win across. And
Speaker 11: so right now Miles can stand there and say, well,
Speaker 11: you know you're throwing a mud but really there's nothing
Speaker 11: you can do to stop it.
Speaker 2: Cameron very quickly, Ol.
Speaker 14: Look, I agree with Lisa entirely. This is the scare
Speaker 14: campaign the Liberal Party missed. This is Labour's big new
Speaker 14: tax on savings and it should have been a huge
Speaker 14: scare campaign. And for the Corio neecapit it be crying foul.
Speaker 14: I mean it could meet. I mean, this guy's finishing
Speaker 14: off his industrial mates, so he's playing it pretty hard anyway.
Speaker 14: But no, this is a Liberal scare campaign that should
Speaker 14: have been in the election and Lisa's absolutely.
Speaker 2: Right, Lisa Cameron, thank you for your time. Don't go
Speaker 2: anywhere a cash strap. Victorian government still loose with the
Speaker 2: check book ahead of tomorrow's budget. Will take a look
Speaker 2: at that with Saxon Davidson from the Institute of Public Affairs.
Speaker 2: The seat of Bradfield in Sydney, formerly held by Paul
Speaker 2: Fletcher for the Liberal Party have to go to a
Speaker 2: recount now is less than one hundred votes in it.
Speaker 2: This is how we called it for Nicolette Buller on yesterday.
Speaker 2: There are no votes left.
Speaker 17: My caveat on this is that in this seat we
Speaker 17: can still see Deesel CAPTAREI and winning on a recount,
Speaker 17: but all the votes in so we're saying.
Speaker 2: Nicolett Buller, she's in front.
Speaker 3: It's a game at the moment for climate two hundred.
Speaker 2: So let the recount begin, but it could be another
Speaker 2: Liberal seat to the Teals. Let's return to Victoria. There
Speaker 2: is budget which is being delivered tomorrow by the Labor government.
Speaker 2: For more analysis, I'm joined now by research fellow at
Speaker 2: the Institute of Public Affairs, Saxon Davidson and Saxon Now
Speaker 2: apparently there's going to be a surplus posted, So that's fantastic,
Speaker 2: that's lovely. We've been reassured that debt will not exceed
Speaker 2: two hundred billion dollars given the forward estimates last year,
Speaker 2: or one hundred and eighty eight billion dollars. So that's
Speaker 2: terribly reassuring too, isn't it. And my tongue is firmly
Speaker 2: in my check.
Speaker 17: Well, this surplus is almost certainly an illusion because the
Speaker 17: calculations for this surplus will not include any of the
Speaker 17: various boondoggles spending on infrastructure projects, most prominently the suburban
Speaker 17: rail loop. So no, I'm not reassured in the slicest
Speaker 17: about the financial situation Victoria finds itself in what.
Speaker 2: Is surprise, And of course there is more spending in
Speaker 2: this budget, things like free public transport for kids, which
Speaker 2: is odd because you know, that's the kind of thing
Speaker 2: that you would expect to maybe try out as an
Speaker 2: election policy. But they're a year and a half away
Speaker 2: from a state election and they're already throwing this stuff
Speaker 2: out the Allen government. Does that indicate that they may
Speaker 2: be worried?
Speaker 17: I think it shows just how desperate this government is.
Speaker 17: We saw a very similar policy from the Miles government
Speaker 17: in Queensland just before they lost to the LMP. And
Speaker 17: this government is under pressure considering that they are behind
Speaker 17: in the polls, and by all reports and rumors they
Speaker 17: are under internal pressure from a potential spill as well.
Speaker 2: Indeed, and the difficulty here is, of course, it's basically
Speaker 2: impossible for Labor to get the budget back on track.
Speaker 2: Even if you had a change of state government. With
Speaker 2: debt hurdling towards two hundred billion dollars, how are you
Speaker 2: ever going to undo that?
Speaker 17: It would require drastic change cuts to government wide spending,
Speaker 17: not just what we're seeing in the surplus that will
Speaker 17: be announcing the budget tomorrow. We had the IPA released
Speaker 17: to Rapport a couple of years back, calling for one
Speaker 17: percent all of government spending reduction until the budget is
Speaker 17: and structural surplus. But until that happens, I believe that
Speaker 17: the budget in Victoria will be in structural decline.
Speaker 2: Now, Labour's Productivity Commission is investigating what lowering the company
Speaker 2: tax rate would do to Australia. You know, it's an
Speaker 2: effort to kick start the shocking productivity growth we have.
Speaker 2: We have one of the highest corporate tax rates in
Speaker 2: the world. At thirty percent, I can't see an argument
Speaker 2: not to lower it.
Speaker 17: It would be a small and positive step into increasing
Speaker 17: business investment here in Australia.
Speaker 2: But I mean, the truth of it is that there
Speaker 2: is far.
Speaker 17: Too much red tape for businesses to be confident to
Speaker 17: invest in Australia and increase productivity. And this lowering of
Speaker 17: the corporate tax rate may just be replaced with this
Speaker 17: incoming super tax, which will be a huge halting to
Speaker 17: individual investment into Australia. So I believe that there's too
Speaker 17: much red tape and too many other taxes that could
Speaker 17: be incoming for productive to increase.
Speaker 2: It's a good point. I've always thought that the less
Speaker 2: you ask for, the more you will get. Surely it
Speaker 2: would attract more business to Australia. It almost certainly would.
Speaker 17: But there are very there are very much more things
Speaker 17: that could be done after this if Australia wants to
Speaker 17: increase its productivity, like Jim Chalmers said the day after
Speaker 17: the election, but without further change, I doubt that that
Speaker 17: will happen even after a corporate a corporate tax removal
Speaker 17: or decrease.
Speaker 2: Saxon, thank you so much for your time, and you
Speaker 2: know Once we've dealt with corporate text, we should took
Speaker 2: about the rest of the tech system as well. I mean,
Speaker 2: Brad could creep again. Why is this stuff that they
Speaker 2: didn't talk about during the election campaign, the liberals that is.
Speaker 2: That's all I've got time for today. Up next, Paul
Speaker 2: Murray Live Sticker Round.