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