Paul Murray Live | 30 May

Australia we don't have a bill of rights. Now. One of the problems with writing a bill of rights is, as we see in places of the United States, what might be okay a couple hundred years ago, like a right to own a gun, when a gun wasn't a machine gun becomes a machine gun. So the people who put Ustradia together never believed that we should have a bill of rights. But we assume that we have things

like that right to free speech. Where the reality is is that there's no piece of paper anywhere that actually gives us that legal protection. It is assumed. It has been sort of fiddled with by courts over the years. But as we saw during COVID, if a government wants to turn around and start to change what you can say, there's no thing in the constitution that fights back against it like it would be in the United States. So in many ways, our freedom of speech is in the

hands of the people that we elect. And today there was a group of people who wanted to make a whole bunch of changes to the laws and Australia in and around human rights. Now, interestingly, this was a cross party that mainly lefties group of people who got together and among other things, have demanded all sorts of things

like right to education and right to housing. And that was written up in all the lefty press today that the inquiry had asked for rights like a right to privacy, a right to health, environment, a right to social and economic rights like adequate housing, a right to education, a

right to hold an express one's religion. Now, we can have a very long chat all night about how much, what and where, but at least there is an acknowledgment here that there are people who believe that laws need to be changed to tighten up what are your rights to make them clearer now, particularly things like the environment is something that's a collection of school kids have been trying to take to courts, and courts have often ruled well, there's nothing in the law that says that there is

part of the duty of care of a government when it's looking at something like a coal mine is its effect on the environment when it pretends to future generations. So they're coming at this from a very lefty perspective.

But here is what Josh Burns, who is the chair of the committee, the Labour Party representative, a bloke who's apparently on his way to the ministry, should they ever do a reshuffle sometime soon about the ideas behind more rights for Australians or seen royal commissions where frankly, human rights have been disregarded and the human rights are vulnerable as aliens have been disregarded by decision makers in this country. We need better protections for.

and expression. As Josh Burns just said there that over the past recent years, many people's rights have been infringed upon Well, is there no greater example of that than the lady who was arrested for posting something on the internet that was not violent, that was not racist, it just was not to the government's liking when it came

to protest against the decisions of the government. Nothing in this Instead, the closest you can see is in and around protests, because the left believe that, particularly in places like New South Wales, the rules against protest like you have to ask for permission first, and if you break the agreement that you have with the police then they can therefore shut down the protest. All of that is an infringing of rights. Of course, nobody cared when it

was the COVID rights. But what we are seeing here is a very interesting conversation that normally the center and the center right should be in favor of anything that

strengthens your rights. But interestingly, it is the center left and far left that of course are in control of the Federal Parliament at the moment, and will have even greater control after the next election if most likely the government goes into minority, and they don't see freedom of speech as something that needs to be strengthened now this will not be on the front page of the paper tomorrow.

It didn't lead the six pm Yews tonight. But right now we're in the middle of conversations about censoring the Internet, about what the government declares to be misinformation. That is a very big step from a country that has freedom of speech. Now. Again, while I am somebody who is a little more on the libertarian side of freedom of speech and generally speaking, you know, I'm not quite the full absolutist, I do think there are plenty of times when people's people who go too far should feel a

sanction for it. And generally speaking, I think that when you say something well, you can't expect there will be no reaction to it, and people reacting to it and debating. That's a good and open society. Do I think that hate preachers should be able to say the horrific things that they do without any national security implications, No, of course not. Do I think that people should be able to abuse Jews in Australia because of the decisions of

a government is of course not right. So there are limits. And I understand what defamation means, and I understand what discrimination means, and I understand all of those necessary things that yes, probably do hem us in a little bit more than the right to free speech in the United States. That means you can say whatever you want at any time,

generally speaking, and it'll be protected by the law. But all of this effort, all of this study, all of this discussion, all of this power, and none of it includes your rights to speech, your rights to express your own opinion that may well be contrary to what the government believes is the truth of the day. We're seeing on multiple fronts, from the misinformation to this scenario, through to crackdowns on violent content put up by social media.

But slowly but surely, there are lots of attacks coming towards your ability to say what the government doesn't want you to say. Every now and then, someone needs to point out what is happening, because the reality is that the Parliament as it is constituted right now, and the assumption of the people who are in our parliament right now, we don't matter. You don't matter because their coalition of the left and far left gives them passage through the

lower House and passage through the Upper House. Yet you should know what's going on. You should contact your local politician to see if they understand what's going on, and the people who were in part behind this report should come onto a program like this and explain to us why speech wasn't one of the things that they thought had been eroded over the past few years. Now, what

are coincidents? I mean, just a few little coincidences happen, And of course you know, nobody believes in conspiracy theories here, but you know, amazing what happens just at the same time right now. Of course, a few weeks ago, Channel Line breaks the story about the Australian chopper that was interfered with by China. If it was not for the pilot, potentially they could have crashed into the ocean and died. The reporting at the time from Channel nine was pretty

clear that Australia had responded to this. Richard Marles says Australia has formally registered its deep concern about the incident, telling Beijing it's completely unacceptable and the Prime Minister said this That clearly left the impression with the Australian people that everything had been done to voice displeasure at a potentially deadly incident. Not the first, by the way, we have.

no phone callse whatsoever. Instead, some of the things that we said, including press conferences at Beefweek, were counted as voicing displeasure with China. Well, as we told you that story last night, it started to build a little bit of attention. I got plenty of messages from people in the media going really, okay, can you send me this and that details? Right? And generally speaking, that's the beginning

of something becoming an issue tomorrow. But guess what magically happened today a biggest story for the media that they decided to of course report from the government's perspective, which was a win for the Albenezy government because of its new relationship with China. The tara On beef are to be removed in the next little while, made it all

the way to CNN. But just isn't that convenient that less than twenty four hours after Australia lying about confronting China, China turns around and does a favor for the Australian government, who of course did a favor for China, but not really blowing up at all about a scenario involving our defense force that could have killed the people on that helicopter.

I mean, what is nothing to see here? Oh yeah. Also, it was a story that covered over something that happened this week which does have serious implications for the electoral fortunes of the Abernese government. Not in New Town, not in Marrickville, nowhere in the Yarra Council, but it does in Western Australia the live sheep exporting industry. Remember the government a few weeks ago said that they were going to start to come up with the system to turn

it off by twenty twenty eight. Well, the laws have now shown their face in a beginning the process of going through the Parliament. Now, of course they will make it through because the center left are in charge of downstairs, and then we start to go quite to the left, including the Greens and Door Matt Pocock and Lambee and Thorpe and all of them will of course sail this thing through. So it is going to probably end up

becoming law. But good on the people of Western Australia and the sheep farmers of Western Australia who are starting to fire up. Now. Remember in Western Australia, the Labour Party won four seats. If they lost just two of those seats, the government would be making its way towards minority government. Which is why it's important to see here that while the government defends the live sheep exports via their announcements that they have made this week in Western Australia,

they're fighting back. Keep the sheep dot com dot au, Keep the sheep dot com dot au. You might see this truck in and around Well and many others in and around Western Australia. If you want to support it, if you want to keep the trade alive, if you want to get the government to pay a price for what they're about to do to hundreds of families destroying their livelihoods to make people feel better in the woke bits of the city. Keep the Sheep dot com dot Au.

Now again Senate Estimates, Thank you gives us a little bit more detail. And as this show has grown over the years, we are even more focused on data and we try to show you things firsthand because so easily the people who would like us off the air would like to pretend that we are the Peanut Gallery or the morons or the people who don't follow the details.

We're just making it up as we go along and thankfully showing you things like reports that I try to show you every night, data that I try to show every night, and the people in their own words every night helps tell the stories that we then go off and have the opinions about. But again in Senate Estimates, a shocking amount of detail came out about a potential major security hole in Australia that looks like it could

be exploited by unfriendly nations like China. Now, yes, the prime ministers all get along, and the premiers all get along, and the upper diplomats get along, but of course China spies on Australia. It tries to interfere in our universities, it tries to intimidate those students by threatening their families

back home. It has stolen the plans to the AZO building, and of course in the past has been accused of hacking the infrastructure of Parliament House and many of the political parties which make up the people who represent us

in Canberra. Well, fascinating statement here about some problems that are seemingly showing the head of the moment, about the number of people who work for the politicians who we are not doing enough security checks on, and as has been the case in other states, the pressure is put onto the staffers as a way of eventually putting pressure onto ptitians. As says, it's potentially all sides of politics,

so let's view it in that way. Well, the head of the National Intelligence Agency is told Senate Estimates hearing on Wednesday that Australia faces a serious and sustained threat from foreign spies in response to claims that there were twelve hundred operatives already in Australia. Direct quote from a bloke called doctor William Stoltz is from the Australian National

University's a national security expert. Political staff are essentially hired and fired at the discretion of the member of parliament. They do not have to undergo basic police checks, but there is no security clearance process. How does that work now? It may well be when it comes to a minister or a particular level of government, but somebodyho's a staffer for a backbench senator or a backbench member of parliament,

where's a security check? It's highly concerning for a country of Australia's sophistication, and given the seriousness of MPs and senators being targeted, it is no longer we're appropriate. The political staff are not better vetted and security cleared. Again, this will not be the front page of the paper tomorrow, but when something terrible happens, you can remember that you

were told about what the threat may be. It means every now and then when we come up with the random question of people in power, such as should there be better security checks for MPs? That's why we're asking the question, same as we're asking the question about okay, cool, and you go right to a house and all of these things. But again, where is the greater legal framework around your right to free speech? Because again, right now

and then, this happens every single day. Remember that you wake up thinking that we've got to have a discussion or a debate or push back against something that we just took for granted the day before. For example, that every single person working around every single MP at the state and federal level is on the up. How can there not be greater security clearance in and around those people. Now we learned something today as well from the Treasury Boss bracket creep is good. Now you are living the

cost of living crisis. We as a country are in the multiple quarters of a per capita recession. Put simply, the Australian economy the real world is in recession, but the government economy it's just ticking alive, which means you're struggling to pay your bills at the moment, no matter what kind. And where as I talk about almost every night about your insurance bills on top of your petrol

and your power and all of those other things. Well, a blow by the name of Stephen Kennedy is the Treasury Secretary and he's also on the Reserve Bank, so he is one of the decision makers about whether we go up or down when it comes to interest rates. But he's also the bloke who's helping put the budget together and well under the herald for picking this up. Not like it, but back bracket creep gee whizho for

todd Anyway, bracket creep is aiding the inflation fight. So that of course means when you pay more tax, it's better because you have less money to spend in the economy, because if you spent your money then it would push up inflation. He said that in Australia over the past three years, bracket creep had helped reduce inflationary pressures which

otherwise would have amplified if tax thresholds had been pushed up. Quote, bracket creep has been a helpful stabilizing force over the past three years, contributing significantly to the automatic stabilizing influence of the tax system. Now, let me again put that into normal people speak. If they take more of your money,

you have less money to spend. Now, despite the fact that if you had more of your money you might save it or yes, put it on bills, or yes, put it into renovations, because you know, you're allowed to live a life. But instead the government turns around and says, give us a gold star because we're keeping more of your money.

past few years. Just before the pandemic was four hundred and forty seven billion. During the pandemic it was four hundred and eighty one billion, and then five hundred and fifty billion first year out of the pandemic, and upon a change of government, six hundred and eighteen bo billion dollars. So they can talk about the tax cuts as much as they like. They're getting more revenue than ever before,

so they're not even robbing Peter to pay per. They're taking some cream, but then expecting you to earn a little bit more money, which means you start adding to the cake of how much money that comes through. In fact, Samantha Maiden one of her stories, she was trying to get up, and she wrote a few days about it,

but not too many people picked up on it. Was the amount of people that are going to be affected by bracket creep into the next few years shows that on this hand we're giving, but on the other hand, we're taking, and we're going to take a fair amount. In fact, Jim Charmers, big, bigger, better tax cuts also increase personal income tax receipts by twenty eight billion dollars.

Why because people move up a tax bracket. When they redefine the tax bracket, you go up the tax bracket, you end up paying more tax, which apparently is great to fight inflation. Meantime, on the overall issues, the only issue that people care about in Australia, of course, that being certainly in terms of the economy, the cost of living, inflation. It's flow on when it comes to paying off your house and the deserve bank rates, which are clear there now.

Last night I told you that hotter than expected figures when it came to inflation. I went through those for you saw that people were now starting to suggest that the first time that there's going to be any sort of easy give interest rates is not going to be until November twenty twenty five. Repeat November twenty twenty five. That's where we are right now. Of course, at the first of July is when the tax cut scenario starts to kick in, the power rebate for mansions kicks in,

and a whole bunch of other brand new government spending. Well. The suggestion there is that that, of course will also add to inflation. Financial review they put this about why we are now looking at interest rates going up before they start to go down. The suggestion they don't go

down until November twenty five. Now, I won't bore you with all of the details there, but put simply their suggestion now is we have gone from twenty percent chance of a rise to a twenty seven percent chance of a rise now, and that to happen by September this year. So already you are being squeezed by interest rates. There's a chance the squeeze will get worse, then gets slightly better, and I mean slightly better, but you are still choking.

And that's the scenario that the government thinks they will get re elected for now. Of course, when they came to office, one interest rate rise, so yeah, bit of pressure for some, but twelve interest rate rises, potentially thirteen interest rate rises. And remember the Reserve Bank has said that even best case scenario, you will be paying seventy five percent of the increases that you have on interest rates by twenty twenty six. So it feels like it

may get worse before it gets better. But does that surprise you under a Labor government now, to speculate was and we sat here on budget night thinking my, hang on, are they starting to put something together that looks like they could get towards an early election. I also remember saying in and around that time that the real giveaway about when they will give the tools to the Prime Minister to go for an election will be when they

start to change the numbers in the Senate. Now, the way this works was that the Labor Party had a review into the last election. It came up with things like banning the amount of money the Teals could raise and that the Teals could spend, and that every single party would be capped in every single seat. And as I told you, that also is advantaging the Labor Party because unions are completely independent from the Labor Party, despite the fact that they are half of the Labor Party's constitution.

The other thing was that they wanted to add extra senators to the Parliament. They wanted to add an extra two senators to the Northern Territory and to the Act

because currently they only have two each. So Don Farrell was the man who was trying to put this new system in place, and he's had a bit to say in the past couple of days, including that he's been trying to engineer a deal between the major parties for it to double the number of senators in each territory from two to four and bring the total number of the Upper House to eighty. Now, based on the current population, the Northern Territory has two senators fore hundred and fifty

thousand people. The Act has two two senators for three hundred and fifteen thousand people. Tasmani has twelve because it's a state for four hundred and two thousand. So territories have smaller numbers because they aren't states. But of course, as I have said to you before, the real reason they want to do this is not about improving the representation of people in the Parliament from the Act or

the Northern Territory. It is to permanently change the way the Senate works that if not at this election, maybe the next election, maybe the next election after that, maybe the election who knows. But at some point in time when the Labor Party loses government, they have to the coalition would have to deal with a hostile Senate. Now, remember when Tony Abbott won in two thousand and seven, the very clear sorry twenty thirteen, the very clear direction

was stop the boats, kill the carbon tax. Well, the carbon tax was of course not killed until the following July when a more favorable Senate was put in place. So immediately conservative governments will be blocked by more left wing senates. And if you actually have a look at the way that the Northern Territory has voted, there is a good chance that it would end up that there would end up being two Alp senators, one Country Liberal

Senator and maybe one Green Senator. So it would of course improve the overall standing of the center left in the ACTI. Where currently it is a Labor Senator or a Teal Senator, you would probably end up with a Green Senator and a second Teal Senator maybe maybe maybe on the outfring of Liberal senator. But all of that means the numbers in the Parliament would blow out. Let me explain right now, thirty one members of the Senate are from the coalition, twenty six are from the Labor Party.

You need thirty nine votes in the current parliament to actually pass anything. Now. To do that, you need all of Labor, all of Green's. That gets you to thirty seven. Then you need two more to get you to thirty nine. And that is an option where Lamby will say yes, or Pocock will say yes, or Thorpe will say yes, or Yrrall will say yes. Get two of them together. Bang,

you get the piece of legislation through. If you have two extra Labor senators, an extra Teal senator, a couple of extra Green senators that it's an almost permanent block that sits on the center left. I'm being polite to the far left, and they all would be able to kill dead anything that a coalition government would like to potentially do into the future. In a couple of hours time, Donald Trump will make his way back to court where again the jury is currently deliberating his future. That's a

live shot right now. What's happening in New York City. I think it's only about seven thirty in the morning right now about nine point thirty. When he turns up at about ten o'clock in the morning, which is around midnight Australian time, is when Judge Mershon, who is the judge in this case, of course, brings everyone back in and for a second day they start to deliberate. Now they have thirty four separate charges in front of them. They don't just take one vote, They've got to take

thirty four separate votes. They have not made a decision within a couple of hours. So either they are going through every single one very slowly in debating all of it, or somebody's holding out, or who knows what's happening. But Donald Trump was a little different this time, talking outside the court when the jury had been sent away after hearing how the judge had framed the case for the jury. This sounded like a guy who knew what's coming and listening to the judges.

been no proof of that. But the judge gave a very very generous bandwidth to the prosecution, and I think that's why the president's comments and sentiments are exactly accurate.

The case from the prosecution has have been allowed to wander wherever it wants, and any defense at times that the Trump people have put up has been objected and sustained constantly, constantly, constantly, so their legal analysts think just a countdown to guilty.

distancing relax. Everyone. None other than Christy McSweeney is here, along with the wonderful Michael Kroger. Now, Michael, I'm going to start with you, and yes we're going to talk about Andrew Giles, but can we come at this from a slightly different way than everyone else's conversation about Andrew Giles. His incompetence is obvious, his failures are obvious, The responsibility

of the Prime Minister is obvious. But it seems that Albanese is trying to do the Daniel Andrews and Anastasia Paliche play, which is be absolutely shameless, never admit to a fault, ignore all criticism and just push through. Will it work for Albow the way that it worked for Alberanizi? Or is federal politics different?

hundred and four members of the federal over caucus. There are about forty two cabinet ministers, ministers and assistant ministers, meaning there's over sixty backbenches. Sixty backbenches, so mate, knowing how the wheels of Canberra works, you've got sixty two. I think it is exactly to be exact, sixty two backbenches sitting there thinking why am I not being promoted? I'm not being promoted because this Prime Minister is sticking

to this dud. And so in Canberra you always need a turnover of ministers because otherwise the backbench don't see any future, no hope. And then of course they're local branch members say, oh, friend's never been promoted. You know, Friend's obviously not as good as Andrew Giles, otherwise he'd be promoted and so when you have no movement like this, when a prime minister sticks to a minister that everyone in the country knows should have been sacked last year,

it actually does enormous damage. Internally. There will be sixty two backbenches, There'll be out of ministers and assistant ministers who are all throwing darts at Albanizi day, blaming him for them not being promoted and blaming him to sticking to a bloke who should have been sacked.

I mean we've just been realistic. It's a Thursday night conversation where, let's be honest, any other government, any other minister, the level of pressure by this point in time and the proven amount of problems would result in them going. So I think there's something magical. Does let's be you know, I'm a hard marker, but does he have some special superpower in his four D tittery winks that I'm not seeing.

Giles and Albanezi are very closely aligned. The other minister in Bold, Clara O'Neil, is from the right faction, and everybody is forgetting This begins at the supply chain, beginning with the Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus, who either didn't ask for, didn't read, probably didn't think warranted further investigations, the advice from the Australian Government solicitor.

and she's beyond commentary, beyond ridicule. Her statement yesterday was that any sort of criticist of her calling the country racist or more importantly, in my view, this fantasy that in the suburbs, evil white people are going to turn on people who look different, whatever that means when they're bidding at auctions because of Peter Dutton and his cuts to immigration, which are racist, but Albo's cuts to immigration

completely fine, makes sense, right. Peter Dutton understandably responded in the way that he should have with Ray Hadley this morning onto Jubet.

at times. But if you dare push back on them, oh, it's not helpful to me. It's not helpful to the national debate. As my boss often says to me, if you lead with your chin, somebody is going to have a swing at it. Right, so she leads with her chin, the same thing is going to take place. So you either say bugging you or yep, fair cop. That's that's the two options. Not you know I'm the victim here.

be a member of the left. She's her politics are probably between the left of the party in the Greens, and people look at her now on the seventh Thiry report and think, you're not impartial. You're just part of the hard left at the ABC. It's one of the reasons why no one you know who watches politics seriously thinks of the ABC as anything like impartial or independent.

Of course, they've got their cheer squad, the Friends of the ABC, et cetera, and they coterie around them with the hard left that always want to defend the ABC. But the bottom line is mate, the ABC not impartial. Everybody knows that. It's one of the reasons their ratings have gone down successively, that disastrous Q and A program, ABC News and Current Affairs ABC Radio. It's all deteriorating

because people don't trust the ABC's independence and impartiality. And Laura just proved that, and David Anderson proved just once again in the Senate whilst he's not up to the job of being managing director.

your seventy six seats. There are some that are watching the institutions that are as corrupted intellectually as that one.

in the United States about going on Fox News. Right. Conversely, it's important that people of the center right go on Radio National and go and Okay, they might be beaten up and all the rest of it, but you've got to say, I'm not here for the host, I'm here for the audience. Right. So I think I think that, Okay, Peter Duton should always continue to engage with the ABC, But if he wants to give them a little smack every now and then, we're saying, well, obviously you'll ask

me that question. Well, well, we all know what your view is. If he says something like that, then that's okay. But I wouldn't be I wouldn't be in the band. Never go on, never take their calls, don't go on their air waves kind of camp.

what's the point? Right side gigs don't go to no more, no more, no more going to these hard left, these extreme left writers' festivals, which is just which is just sort of our old you know, Vietnam brigade, all dressed up with scarves and in their seventies and eighties, all howard hats, all the phil about as, all the people that used to buy Jim Knn's books. It's the same old mob that's been going to these hard left writers' festivals for decades. Time for the see people to stop attending them.

snow Left is the Way You Like It? On a Thursday, and another than Michael Kroger, and here of course with Christy McSweeney. Michael, what about this University of Sydney professor who says that the accounts of the sexual assault on October the seventh fake news? How is this person still in a classroom? And whose opportunity is it to say, Okay, that's it, You're gone, mate.

You couldn't You couldn't, You can't see them for the dust?

That goes one election into the future, and we increase the number of center left or hard left people in the Senate so that eventually, if there is ever not a Labor government, they will only ever be able to pay a past cent legislation.

and a mountain of debt that comes after. We're being very risk averse on every single issue that's presented itself. We're refusing to sack Andrew Giles, and here we are making sure that we can do our best continue on as the party of government in the Senate. If we get to close to a minority government, it's an installation policy for Labor as they look down the barrel of minority government or if not a loss, where they're going.

But I think minority is more likely, and should that minority position.

Downing Street. No one's there to stop him. He's having a wonderful time and it'll be the easiest win the British Labor Party he's ever had. So he continues to be the winner of the week.