I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM in Canberra. Accountability is often promised in moments of crisis. Much harder is what comes after. Matt Canavan has taken over the
national sharpening his party's ability to confront one nation. Former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson has walked away from the government's Anti Semitism Royal Commission, raising fresh questions about a process already under pressure, and years after robodet devastated thousands of lives, a final reporters landed with a reminder of just how
hard real accountability can be defined. Today, Press Gallery journalist Karen Middleton and what Canavan's rise means for the Coalition, while Richardson's resignation matters to Anthony Albanesi and what the robodebt findings tell us about whether the system is capable of holding anyone to account. It's Saturday, March fourteen, Karen.
This week we saw yet another leadership change from the Coalition, which had the echoes of the great political philosopher melman Ninger's brief brush with politics in two thousand and one.
I was just a person out there making sure that I was I'm buggered I'm sorry, that's right.
I like to resign Nationals leader David Little Proud declaring this week.
I'm buggaed I'll have enough to lead this great party would be the wrong thing for me to do.
I love it. Matt Canavan, the new leader, is a brasher, more right wing character than a Little Proud. So will we see a change in direction under his leadership.
I don't know that we're going to see a total change in direction. I think we'll certainly see a change in the way the National's positions are communicated, probably less chaotic approach, I think. I mean, we saw under David Little Proud the coalition split twice and that was really his instigation. So he sort of was a tantrum thrower.
And Matt Canavan is not that he's an economist. He's a fact based arguer, so he's a lot more what you see is what you get, and I think you will get from Matt Canavan a pretty sort of straight shooter, albeit somebody who's definitely on the right and has firm ideas.
Yeah, what are some of his ideas? What are some of the things that he's stand for during his time as a parliamentarian.
He's very opposed to the target for net zero greenhouse gas missions, which the Coalition has already dumped.
Apparently we're not getting a good deal from net zero. It's been a bit of a scam where bankers and big business makes money and small business.
He's long talked about that, but he sees that his focus is on cheaper energy.
Power prices have gone up forty percent since we signed up to net zero. Both electricity and gas prices have gone up by that much. It's not a good deal for us, right, So something's got it.
He says.
He's agnostic about the kinds of energy. He's very pro fossil fuels.
We need more astrainaned babies. We need more Australian humor, more Australian jokes. We need more Australian barbecues, sometimes often fueled by fossil fuels.
He's big on the family unit. He's got five kids and a wife who raised the kids as a stay at home mum, so he's big on things like income splitting, parents being able to split their income if one parent stays at home and doesn't do paid work, so that they pay tax across two people rather than the primary bread When they're being taxed. He's very anti abortion and he's supported measures to try and restrict access to abortion
under particular circumstances. He's a practicing Christian and he talks about that, but he's also a person who argues on FATS.
He's a guy. He's also acted as a bit of an attack dog and a provocateur for the NATS. What will his approach be to One Nation as a threat and do you think he's better or worse place to handle it than little Proud?
Well, this is going to be fascinating now that we have Barnaby Joyce in One Nation. It's a head to head contest not only between Matt Canavan and Pauline Hanson the leader of One Nation. And it's also interesting that the NATS will now be led from the Senate, which is highly unusual, and that's where paul and Hanson also is. But we've got the contest between Matt Canavan and Barnaby Joyce. Now,
Matt Canavan was a protege of Barnaby Joyce. His first job in politics when he left the Productivity Commission where he was a longtime economist, was working for Barnaby Joyce.
And you know they're good mates and they share a lot of things in common, and Barnaby Joyce says that, but I think there'll be some fascinating internal discussions because Matt Canavan has some very firm ideas and while he doesn't throw tantrums like David Little Proud, he will assert himself and he will probably communicate more clearly and prosecute the case against One Nation. And he's very strong against some of the things that One Nation has advert and
particularly that Pauline Hanson has advocated issues around race. He's very opposed to the way she comments on issues around race, and particularly recently her comments on Muslims suggesting there were no good Muslims. He has shredded that in public.
Totally un Australian for someone to say that eight hundred thousand Australians, of those eight hundred thousand Astraians for a Muslim, there's no good people among them. That's what Pauline said. Now clearly I think she went too far, and now she won't apologize because she doesn't do that. She never admits that.
He's got the courage to say no, no, that's wrong. We're one country. We don't want to be divided. There are good people in Australia of all faiths and we respect.
Them when it comes to Barnaby Joyce. He even got to mention in Canavan's first speech.
We tucked ourselves in for the night and then I remember that I hadn't called my wife, so I got out my phone and texted my wife, Hi babe, love you, Missy Lotts. At least I thought that text went to my wife instead. I had been to Varnaby so much it went to him by mistake.
So they are pretty tight. Is that going to be an advantage for Canavan knowing the enemy of sorts?
I think that's a very interesting point. And potentially, yes, he knows Barnaby Joyce's vulnerabilities, he knows how he thinks, and he knows where he will be agreeing with Pauline Hanson and where he will not. Now, for example, he knows that Barnaby Joyce was uncomfortable with what Pauline Hanson said about Muslims. Barnaby Joyce has said that basically, and
Matt Canavan has pointed to that. So he won't be afraid to try and point out divisions within the One Nation team because that will be a way of the Nationals seeking to pull back some of those votes that the Polsters tell us have gone to one nation. So I don't think you'll be shy about trying to split them and show that they are not a party of government.
Yeh, Popcorne, I reckon, Yes, coming up the overpaid foremost by chief he walked away from five and a half grand a day Karen. Former AJA by Stennis Richardson has resigned from his job as a Special Advisor to the Royal Commission on Anti Semitism and Social Cohesion, saying he believed he was surplus to requirements. What were the reasons he gave for stepping away.
Well, he's basically said he's become well. I think the phrase us was a grossly overpaid researcher.
Very very simply. I felt I was the fifth wheel. It's a very legally.
If we step back, remember how this all came about. After the terrorist attack on Bonde Beach on December fourteenth, the Prime Minister announced an urgent review of the role of intelligence agencies and law enforcement. The Prime Minister appointed Dennis Richardson to run that. Now he's a former head of AZO, but the government came under pressure to hold a Royal Commission and folded those two inquiries together, but
they weren't a very good fit. The model of the Royal Commission just hasn't been able to accommodate the kind of inquiry that Dennis Richardson was doing. It's going to take longer. There are now all sorts of rules around accessing documents, the agencies of lawyer up. It's a different kind of investigation. He makes the point and he wants to emphasize this that it will still get a result, but it's going to take longer.
It will still be a valuable document. The Royal Commission will go on to have hearings and I'm sure the Royal Commission will will will at the end of the end of the day do a highly professional job.
And so I think we can expect that the interim report that the Royal Commission hands down at the end of April that was meant to be when Denis Richardson's report was coming, won't have as much detail, won't be as sharp, and won't have as many recommendations as it might have done if it was the Dennis Richardson version.
So does it seem like it was a mistake to combine these two investigations, the Security Investigation and the Royal Commission. Does it seem like there was an ad hoc approach that just hasn't paid off.
I think it wasn't well thought through. I think the Prime Minister got forced into that by the political pressure and the public pressure he was under. But Dennis Richardson has made the point that they're really in retrospect, needed to be more detailed conversations about how the two processes could work better together.
So the interim report that will now be done by the Royal Commission will be a very different document to the one that I would have done when I was doing the review prior to the Royal Commission being announced.
In the end, I think what we were getting was he risked having reports come out with his name attached to them in which she hadn't really had a lot of involvement. So he's making a slightly complicated argument trying to say it's not that he doesn't have confidence in
what they will find. It's just that he's not sure how much role he would have, and he can't be certain about things, and he didn't want to be involved in something where he had his name on it, but he may not necessarily have been deeply involved in the drafting.
So what does this now mean for the Royal Commission and for Alberanesi? Given the whole process has been fraught from the get go and that Albanesi tied himself to the expertise from the outset. Now that he's gone, what does that mean for the Royal Commission.
Well, these are good questions and certainly we've heard from the Jewish community in the last couple of days that they were blindsided by this and that they were concerned that it undermines the credibility of the Royal Commission. And the opposition also has pointed to those comments from Albanesi originally suggesting that Dennis richards Woman was a crucial person, that he was integral, that he was the person that the best placed person to do this inquiry, and suddenly
now he's not there. So that poses a sort of a political complication for the Prime Minister and it does look all a little bit messy.
We know the Prime Minister didn't want this Royal Commission in the first place, but now that he's finally been dragged kicking and screaming to calling it. It has to make sure it's a success, and I have grave concerns that it will not be a success if Dennet Richidon is not involved.
There are people in the government sort of saying privately, well, you know, we told you we wanted a Richardson inquiry. You all wanted a royal commission. This is what we've got now. I think, sure, that's one argument, but in the end, the Prime Minister did decide to have a royal commission. So it's on the government to have made sure that those two structures that they put together could work together, and that is something that they're going to
have to answer for. We've seen plenty of royal commissions, some of which have been accused of being political. This one is not. So I think in the end people will get behind it, but the opposition in the short term is going to put pressure on the government and raise those concerns about whether it's being undermined, and so we'll have to see how that debate plays out in short term.
I think finally, Karen, this week we also saw the release of the Robo Debt Report, three years after initial findings. Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison was cleared, but two public servants were found to have engaged in serious corrupt conduct. Why did this take so long and what's the reaction being?
Well, remember the Royal Commission made findings against a number of people and made recommendations that they be referred to the National Anti Corruption Commission, and there was a huge controversy a year or so ago when the Royal Commission came out and decided it would take no further action on any of it. The decision drew more than one thy two hundred complaints, with some.
Consider Commissioner Briton should ask himself whether him remaining in that position is good for the National Anti Corruption.
People said, well, hang on a minute, you know, where's the transparency and accountability? There was not a sense, i think in the public demain that there was appropriate accountability, that the process had really been gone through as much as it should have been. Now, what we've got this week after that report came out was that the government then published tabled in Parliament the sealed chapter that the Royal Commissioner had published that detailed all of the referrals
that she had made. So we got a little bit more background information about what the Royal Commission thought. But this whole process gives rise to questions about what the point of the National Anti Corruption Commission the knack really is. Now it's important to say that police looked at one of those public servants and they found there wasn't enough evidence to go forward with the prosecution, and that's ultimately
what the NAC has found as well. So there's the general public reaction to this, and then there's the reaction of the families of people who were most personally affected. We saw people who took their own lives as a result of that robodebt process, which was atrocious, and those families I'm sure will be feeling deeply sad that there isn't more that comes of this.
In the end. Karen, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks Daniel.
Seven Am is a daily show from Solstice Media. It's made by Atticus Bastow, Aria Richards, Chris Dangate, Crystal Calla, Nicole Johnstone, Travis Evans, Zoltenfecho and me Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Van Balote Bordio. Thanks for listening to seven Am. Please have yourself a great weekend,