Live on Sky News. This is Sharry.
Good evening and welcome to the program. Caleb Bond in for Shari tonight. Well, Australia Day is of course around the corner. The activists back in force, but this time they'll be joined by the pro Palestinian mob to go
after sorry, one of the country's biggest sporting events. Indigenous leader Warren Mundine excuse me, I've got something stuck in my throat, will give us his thoughts on the annual January twenty six panic attack later, much like the panic attack I'm having right now, plus with a major update on the anti Semitic attacks in Sydney. It looks like the New South Wales police are starting to get on top of the crisis. If only we could say the
same though for the Albanesi government. I'll have Julian Lisa on the show a little later to discuss, and plenty of fun content too. Between Tesla owner's crying about Elon Musk being right wing Queensland government workers trying to stave off the summer heat, there's plenty for my panels to get into tonight. First, these anti Australia Day activists are truly getting desperate. I mean to go after the Australian Open. For heaven's sake. Sunday night, of course, will be the
men's finals. So apparently the trots down in Melbourne, there's plenty of them down there. They're going to rock up and interrupt one of the biggest tennis events in the world. And this goes to the point of what they're really protesting. They're not protesting about January twenty six. They're not protesting
about Australia Day being on January twenty six. They're protesting about Australia, the whole concept of the place, the fact that it even exists, and you could change Australia Day to any day on the calendar and it wouldn't make a lick of difference because it would still be the same country that they hate, with the same colonial roots that they hate. It was just about the date, the
twenty sixth. Who wouldn't go after one of our biggest global events, because of course this could get global attention if they somehow manage to disrupt the men's final, But that's what they want. They want Australia to look like a laughing stock on the world stage. They want to embarrass Australia because they don't believe in Australia. Even Victorian Premier just Into Allen says protesting the Australian Open is disgusting.
I think it'd be disgusting to target the Australian Open and that would really break I think the patients of the public. Conflict around the world should never bring and should never be used as an opportunity to bring division and hate to our streets. But we have seen a small number of people choose to use that overseas conflict for their own purposes to drive hate and division here
in our streets. Victoria Police are operationally ready. They will be there in large numbers, and they have the powers they need should any activity turn violent, and.
She's right, it would test the public's patients and these protesters, these activists need to know that we are not going to be patient with them anymore. We are sick of being told that we live in a terrible country when we know that we don't, and that we should feel guilty all the time when we know that we shouldn't. We know that we live in one of the best
countries on Earth. We're sick of being lectured about conflicts on the other side of the world and being told by people whose religion and culture are anathema to ours that we need to cowt out to them and change our values so they feel more comfortable. I mean, what do you think would happen if I walk through the middle of Gaza this weekend proclaiming that it was the ancestral land of the Jews. I certainly wouldn't be back here on Monday to be able to talk about it.
And this is apparently what might happen in Melbourne on Sunday. You have these Anti Australia Day people and these pro Palestinian people both organizing rallies on Australia Day that might converge and make one massive protest in the CBD that will then move towards Melbourne Park to disrupt the tennis. And it's no coincidence that the pro Palestinian mob would choose to protest on Australia Day, because again, they might be outwardly protesting about something on the other side of
the world, but they're also protesting against Australia. They and the Anti Australia Day lot are one and the same. They share the same common belief are disdain for the West. They could protest any other day of the year, but just like they chose to protest on October the seventh, they couldn't even let Jews an Israeli's mark in peace, the day that their people were massacred. They choose to protest on Australia Day to drive home the point that
they don't like us. They know exactly what they're doing. They know that Australia Day is quote unquote a divisive day, or at least some have done their best to make it a divisive day, and they want to wed open that division a little bit more because it helps confuse and weaken a Western country. It makes a mockery of
our culture, and that is exactly what they want. And if they can join with the Australia Day protesters to make a mega protest that interrupts the Tennis and gets their message on TV screens across the world about what a divided country Australia is, then even better for them. By the way, what are they even protesting about anymore? I mean, all this time they've been calling for a cease fire, they finally got one that includes some pretty good terms for Hummas, it should be said. And they're
still not happy. But you see, they were never just protesting about Israel or against war. They were protesting against the West. They were protesting against us and our values and our laws and our beliefs. It was never just about Israel versus Hamas, it was about the West versus the rest. That's why they're still protes testing, and that's why they're protesting on our national day.
That's why you can't change the date of Australia Day.
You give these people an inch, they will take a mile. They will not be happy until the whole concept of Australia has been destroyed. And they're getting more and more desperate because their efforts aren't working anymore. I mean, you know, we might have been through a decade of self loathing as a nation over Australia Day, but Australia Day is back.
You saw the polling from the IPA recently. Support for Australia Day went from sixty three percent last year to sixty nine percent this year, and even the majority of young people supported it being it. On January twenty six, we stared down the voice. We stood against racial division. Sporting clubs are cutting back on divisive welcomes to country and Australians once again feel confident to celebrate their national day. We have rejected their division and in response, they will
try even harder to divide us. But we must not let them win. We can't let them win. We won't let them win. Australians of all colors and creeds and backgrounds are standing up for this wonderful country and this wonderful culture that we all share by doing the most Australian thing possible and telling these misfits to bugger off so we can enjoy a beer and a barbie in celebration of what unites us. We will not be divided and it's time once and for all to get this rubbish off our streets.
Now.
There was a small spot of bother for Opposition leader Peter Dutton today when he again said, as he has been saying this week, that unlike Donald Trump, he wouldn't pull out of the Paris Accords, but he appeared to say today that he would break its terms. He started on two GB this morning where he said we couldn't pull out of the deal because it would hurt exports.
We're an export nation, so unlike the United States. So we're a small nation. We're a population of only twenty seven million people. We produce more than we can consume, and farmers and manufacturers rely on markets in Asia, in Europe and America to export our products. And we've signed up to an international agreement which I think we'll have
continuing relevance for countries in Europe and the future. Dynamic can change, but we have to act in our country's best interest and to have European countries for example, but not exclusively applying tariffs to our exports would mean a lot of economic activity here, a lots of jobs.
Then he spoke at a press for a little later and said he wouldn't be sitting any targets other than zero bar twenty fifty.
We're not holding we're not having targets. I've said this before. The government's got a secret plane in relation to twenty thirty five, which has all sorts of assumptions, but the Prime Minister doesn't want you to know about. The Prime Minister is hiding us before the election because it doesn't want people to know what the twenty thirty five target will mean for electricity crisis, where if committed to net zero by twenty fifty.
That's the commitment that we've made and that's.
What would have been on.
Now.
The only problem with that is that under the terms of the Paris Accords, you must set a new target every five years. It says so an Article four, paragraph nine, each party shall communicate a nationally determined contribution every five years, and paragraph eleven says that you can change that only
to make your target more ambitious. So by what Dutton was saying there, we'd stay in the Paris Accords, but we wouldn't obey them, which would open us up to the same sort of sanctions he talked about earlier in the morning, and in that case, what's the point of staying in the accord.
But this afternoon.
Coalition sources told The Australian that Dutton would set a twenty thirty five target he won government, so.
It would be business as usual.
And I know Dutton is worried about teals and the wet in his own party who are demanding more be.
Done about climate change. But I'll give you a hint.
If we're not going to meet our twenty thirty targets, and we won't, then the whole thing isn't worth the paper it's written on. People in marginal seats are far more worried about the cost of their power bills than they are about emissions. Now. Look, I said some time ago that it would be nayhon impossible for the Coalition to win the next federal election just based on the sheer number of seats that they need to form a majority.
I mean, they need twenty one extra seats, and I'd still say it's a difficult task.
But I tell you what, it's definitely not.
Impossible anymore, maybe in the form of a minority government of some description if needed, but it is looking more and more possible. I mean, check out the latest Resolve poll in the nine papers today, Peter Dutton is now ahead as preferred Prime minister, jumping from thirty five percent to thirty nine percent in the space of a month.
And in two party terms, the Coalition also led fifty two to forty eight percent based on preferences if people were voting at an election today forty six percent.
They're also expecting.
Real wages to fall this year, and that's a significant portion of people, and fifty percent half of the people surveyed think that inflation will get worse, not better in the near future. Let's bring in our journalist at the Daily Telegraph, James Willis James, these are pretty dire numbers, just months out from an election for a first term government, I mean, the Albanese government. The Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been saying ad nauseam, don't worry, We're through the worst of.
All of this.
When it comes to inflation, We're coming out the other side, we're correcting course, etc.
People clearly don't believe it.
Yeah, good evening to you, Caleb. And it's funny.
I spent the day in the CBD speaking to a number of small business owners and away from the.
Political spin that you're hearing from.
Both sides, from a lot of the economists, you're hearing these stories from people that are really struggling a lot of people that aren't interested in playing politics, but are struggling now more than ever with energy prices, rent, the cost of food goods, the cost of wages, the cost of a barista, some of the stories I was hearing today which obviously impact the cup of coffee. And look, this polling is deeply concerning and I think the real problem for labor and I'm with you this whole time.
I've thought a simple math sum indicates that it would take two elections for the Coalition to get back in. But look, the real issue for Labor is the polling directly in regards to the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's performance and the Prime minister's leadership is what should be concerning Labor in the next few months as we head up to an election.
I think that is the real issue.
I'm amazed that we haven't heard more rumblings about movement there because and I've said for quite some time, Calb that I've seen the Prime Minister at press conferences. He appears lethargic, he appears like he's not always across his brief. He's getting very angry at journalists when things don't go
his way. In you have to wonder whether that dates back to the Voice and the stunning and disastrous defeat there, but also some of those issues that impacted Anthony Alberinezi last year, the Quanta saga, the issues with purchasing the home. He hasn't handled criticism well. I think he's terribly advised. And the one issue for Labor if he talked to Poulses at the grass roots is the performance of the
Prime Minister. And I think a lot of people thought, look, Peter Dutton might not be popular enough to win an election. The polls start to indicate otherwise. So it's going to be fascinating to see what happens in the next few months.
Yeah, and I think Dutton has really come into his own in the last six months or so. People have been desperate for a modicum of leadership and they've been able to find that in Peter Dutton. They haven't been able to find it in the Prime Minister. And again, one seats they need if they want to form a majority, which is a very big ask.
It is a difficult task. But I'd tell you what.
On the polling we're seeing at the moment, it's not impossible we could see this be a one term government. Wouldn't that be something? And of course, amid all of this plunging support, Jeff Chambers in the ODS is compared to Alberesi and Dutton's election blitz over the summer and basically you've had the unofficial start to the campaign.
He's found that the.
PM visitor Door held events in at least twenty five electorates since December, the first the opposition leader's done twenty fours.
They're pretty much even on that.
But Chambers wrote that the summer campaign analysis shows mister Alberanzi is largely in a defensive posture, visiting at risk Labor seats. Well, Dutton is playing the offensive. He's going to the seats that he wants to take now. Only a few months ago it was reported that Alberanzi was walking around privately, he was going into the party rooms saying that not only would Labor win the next election,
they would be returned with more seats. I suspect the reality you're starting to hit the Prime Minister that that is highly unlikely to be the case.
Well, absolutely, and particularly when you look at some of the polling in Victoria, which has notoriously been a real problem for the coalition, probably its weakest area. And the Liberal insight is a bullish about winning three maybe four seats in Victoria, which has been quite an issue for quite some time. I mean, the Wa election is a bit of a gem and it'll be interesting to see whether the Labor vote holds up there. I think my guard is the Prime Minister will wait until after that
before calling the election. But certainly when you look at approach, I mean the election campaign is underway. Let's face it, they've been everywhere. They've been announcing enormous money. The Prime Minister has been in Queensland, he's been in other parts of the country with announcements. The one thing I would say is that for Peter Dutton, I mean it's a very easy, small target strategy that is going to win
a lot of votes. When he talks about cost of living, people that that politically engaged would be looking at their mortgages, they'd be looking at the household bills, insurance, all the prices that come with running a family and suddenly figuring out well, it actually hasn't been all that straightforward and simple and easy in the past three years. Despite Labor promising to fix the cost of living crisis, I mean.
They've just failed to do that.
They've made other changes in terms of medicine, but not enough to simplify and make it easier for households. And Peter Dunton has enormous gain in terms of migration Kaylor because people look at housing, they look at a shortage of services at state levels in New South Wales where I live, its hospitals. We've failed on our housing target again twelve months ago. The Men's government in New South Wales can't keep up. But then people are smart enough
to say, well hang on. In the last few years we've brought one million people into the country, which filled jobs and might have made the economic figures look a little bit better. But they all need a place to live. They wanted a school for their kids, they owned a hospital when they're sick, and so people are starting to put two and two together. So there is enormous ground for Peter Dutton in terms of discussing cuts to migration
and the targets they're moving forward. Plus international students, which I think people have figured out are just a cash grab for universities and don't help Bussie jobs.
And unfortunately for Alberisi, unless those margrants have become citizens, which none of them would have yet, they don't vote. Well done, Albo James, Thank you so much for your time. Let's get into some of the other big stories of the day with Perth Lord Mayor Basil's implus and National Senator Matt Canavan.
Welcome to you both.
Now. Gina Rynhart's been over in the US for Trump's inauguration. I kind of wish I'd been over there for it, but that's all right.
I won't be able to do it for Trump again.
But who knows, Jadie Vance in four years time might be worth going over Forore if he has a shot at it, because it certainly looked like one hell of a party. But she reckons that Alberize needs to take a page from Donald Trump's playbook. Now, look, the chances of that happening are probably about the same as me protesting against jumps racing. But she told The Australian that if we are sensible, we should set up a doge the dog immediately the Department of Government Waste, et cetera
reduced government waste, government tape and regulations. Donald Trump has led an important movement, she said, with his policies, a movement that is.
Growing and growing.
I hope our country is not left behind.
And you would have.
To ask the question, wouldn't you that if we were subjected to another term of an Albanesi government, we would be left behind in the wake of a leader like Donald Trump.
I mean, you know, he has.
Brought back the idea of America first and It's great to have the idea of America first, but the rest of the West has to be in on that game. Otherwise, even though we are an ally basil, we will lose out.
That's right.
I think what we've really seen with Donald Trump's victory, And you know, you talk about the two leaders that we have here in Australia. Anthony Albanesi is never going to mirror Donald Trump, nor is Peter Dutton. But clearly Peter Dutton has the conservative qualities that more closely align
with those of Donald Trump. And I think psychologically and in other ways, donald Trump's victory and in the days after his swearing in, that straight shooting and that redefining the way forward for the United States under his leadership, does subconsciously and otherwise make it easier for those on the conservative side, because that traditional more conservative thinking suddenly is back in vogue in one of the world's biggest democracies. And there will be people here who think, if it's
okay over there, it can be okay here. They'll be more confident, they'll be more prepared to speak up, and there'll be more people saying, well, actually, that straight talking and straight thinking is okay and all of that suits Peter Dutton much much more than it does Anthony Albanezi.
Well, it's a reinvigoration and it's a correction in culture mat which I think is so important. But I mean we need a Department of Government efficiency here too, Right, We've got to.
Get serious about government over each government spending, the red tape we all suffer under. I mean, as you pointed out before, America First could very well mean Australia is left behind if we don't get our act together and respond to the competitive challenge that's been put here by
the actions of Donald Trump. And you asked about Gina Reinhart, Well, I think missus Reinhardt is one of Australia's most successful business persons, if not a the most successful, and we see every Olympics that green and gold run through her vain. She is a patriot if nothing else. So I believe we should listen to the likes of Missus Reinhart when
she has something to say. She knows what business needs to attract her to invest in her country, to attract the jobs that we need to give a prosperous future to young Australians. We should we should take some consideration here now of the complaints we're getting from business that Australia is just not a great place to invest right now.
And if that continues, we will have some real economic pain coming to our shores because we've got way too much red tape, Our energy prices are through the roof, and government spending under this Labor Party is out of control.
Correct, And you're quite right.
I mean, if missus Rahanha didn't spend the money that she spends on a lot of sports in this country, we will do nowhere near as well at the Olympics as we do. And you know, you talk about businesses going overseas, just look at Anthony Pratt. I mean he's now moved to the US, has set up chop over there and is doing really well. This is what we
will miss out on now. This is extraordinary. Iran reckons that Hamas's October seven attack on Israel has ended any chance of bringing back the nuclear de escalation set up that they had with the United States, which is probably true.
And the US, the Barda.
Administration, gave billions and billions and billions of dollars to Iran and we know where some of that eventually ended up and Trump canceled this last time he was in office, so I think we can say that's dead. But this is the bit I can't get over. Iran's vice president of Strategic Affairs, Mohammad Javad Zariff, he's at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He's told them that Iran had
no idea that October seven was going to happen. Basil, they give them money, Iran funds Humas and he wants us to believe they had no idea that any of this was going to happen.
Pull the other one.
Actually, we're in to the trouble of explaining their calendars and what was in the calendar and what was blocked in, and that the meetings that they had coming up, and therefore we could not have known. Not too many people around the world are buying that explanation or excuse. It's a tenuous and thin one at its absolute best. And I think those who are skeptical have good reason to be skeptical. So what happens now, where this goes now
and the impact of Donald Trump's election. I suppose the world waits and watchers to see.
Indeed, and this is again the sort of change that we're seeing at the moment, Matt with Trump in power, because he's promised to end the Russia Ukraine War within days of becoming present. Now probably isn't going to happen that fast, but he's signaled to Vladimir Putin today that the US is ready to hit Moscow with tough new trade restrictions of Russia doesn't make a deal soon to end what he calls the ridiculous war in Ukraine. He
staked a lot of capital on this match. He said he will get it done, and somehow I don't doubt that he will.
Well wait and see.
I hope, I hope we can see an end to the conflict there in the Ukraine.
Has been a.
Shocking loss of life there, and obviously now it seems to be in something like a World War One trench warfare where many thousands of people are dying over just inches of territory swapping each day. So you just hope, as someone who loves peace and hates war, we'd love to see the end of that. I mean, Donald Trump has helped bring a fairly immediate end to or cease for at least in Gaza and Palestine that didn't look likely a few months ago. So that's a great result.
And I think all of this as demonstrations that we should try to get less involved in some of these conflicts. We don't always understand the cross currents. I'm not so sure that Iran and Iran might be right, but they didn't know because keep in mind that actually Kataf under Hamas Iran's paramilitary body, was Hesbila. They have different religious different Muslim religious sensitivities there, and we just don't understand
the region. None of us do, And to me, it's just a lesson that don't get involved in these types of wars like Iraq, like Afghanistan, now the Ukraine. They're not our areas and we tend to do more harm than good by getting too involved in them.
I have to ask you both about this.
On a slightly lighter note, I've always wondered how these lefty tesla owners must be coping with the fact that the hero essentially of the electric vehicle movement has turned out to be a right winger. And of course Elon Musk is now essentially part of Trump's administration. He's running that Department of Government Efficiency. Well, there's a Dutch TV news program, and I'm not going to try to pronounce the name because I don't want to insult the good
people of the Netherlands. But they've done some polling that found that nearly a third of Tesla owners apparently want to get rid of their car because they've cracked it over Musk, I mean, Basil.
This man was their hero.
He has done more to usher in an age of the electric vehicle than anyone else, and now they can't even stand the work that he did because he's gone off to support Donald Trump.
And I don't know.
He supposedly did a Nazi salute please well.
And that is debatable obviously. Yeah, I think he's an unusual chap at the best of times. Elon Musk and those actions that he was portraying on stage, I'm not quite sure what they were. I'm also not certain what they weren't either, But by the bye, it's interesting. The ideologic,
the ideology and the personality of politics. Yes, when he was producing the Green Dream Machine, they are all in love with him, and suddenly he's a trump Man and it's not as fashionable, it's not as desirable, and it's not as first choice for all of those people who had chosen it for that reason. What we really don't know is what happens at the end of the life of the tesla anyone, What actually happens to that big chunk of metal. Where does it go? Can it be recycled?
And where do the batteries go? Can they be disposed of safely? We don't know the answers to any of those questions.
Well, maybe Musk can put together one of those rocket chips he's building and we can put them all on that and seend them to another planet and not worry about it.
Basel Matt, thank you so much for you.
Coming up after the break, another arrest over the attempt at arson of a Sydney synagogue. Julian Lisa will join me in just a moment, and Tramp's crackdown on illegal margarants has begun. Three hundred have already been arrested. It's amazing what leaders can do when they really actually want to do it, isn't it. I'll discuss that more with my panel later.
Don't go away.
Well.
A second man was arrested today over an attempt to set a new Town synagogue on fire earlier in the month, and they're also, of course accused of vandalizing it with swastikas.
That's good news.
We'll keep an eye on it as it plays out through the court. Was also revealed today that a man who was arrested last week over an anti Semitic attack in Willara two months ago is the son of former National Comicicero's boss Mick Harwie. He was assassinated in twenty eighteen. And I'm sure that will raise questions about whether gangs
have been involved in any of these attacks. But you have to juxtapose that that we're actually getting somewhere in soul some of these crimes with the window dressing performance from the federal government. This week, Alban Eazy cave to pressure and had that National Cabinet meeting on anti Semitism.
Honestly, I mean he might as well have not held it at all.
Basically nothing came out of it apart from a statement saying that they unequivocally condemn anti Semitism and reaffirmed to stamp it out in Australia. Extraordinary could have told us that without a meeting, could you? And of course they agreed to establish a data base to track anti Semitic crime. How scary is that we can look it up on a computer that'll really help us out? Joining me now is Liberal Julian Lisa Julian, I just well, I'm going
to say I can't get over it. I think I can get over it because I rather expected this kind of performance, because if you go back to when we were first told we were going to have an anti Semitism envoy, we also got an Islamophobia envoy with that. At the same time, there have been calls for a National Cabinet meeting four months from Peter Dutton. He finally held and I think my fears were confirmed that there.
Was a waste of time.
Nothing came out of that meeting as I expected, because they didn't go into that meeting actually wanting to come out with any real answers.
Well, it didn't have to be this way.
The acting Premier of Tasmania, Guy Barnett, has posted on social media that he took to National Cabinet tougher laws, harsher penalties, including mandatory minimums, and I think the Prime Minister and all the state premiers and the chief ministers need to be held to account for that. There were things on the table bought by the acting Premier of Tasmania, which would have been a proper result out of national cabinet,
a result we would have expected. But this was a prime minister who never wanted to hold a national cabinet meeting in the first place. You know, it took a synagogue fire bombing to get him to establish the AFP operation Avaalite. It took the far bombing of a childcare center to get into establish a national cabinet meeting, despite the fact his own anti semitism en had called for this.
Everything that this minister has done, everything that this government has done, has been thoroughly disappointing and hasn't taken the issue seriously. This is not a prime minister doing all he can to stop anti Semitism in this country.
Well, you were up in Brisbane today giving a speech on exactly this, and I believe you spoke about the decision to preference the Greens and take preferences from the Greens as well. I mean at every turn, and we've been talking about this a lot recently. Of course, it's not as though the Prime Minister goes out and directly tells people to go on a tax synagogues, et cetera. But what he has done is created a culture by not standing up, that makes people feel comfortable.
To do that kind of thing.
In Australia, it would have been such a simple act of leadership that could have happened fifteen months ago and at many points since then, that didn't require a lot of effort.
Really, that could have avoided a lot of hurt.
Have you listened to the very different language between the Prime Minister and Chris Min's the Premier of New South Wales. Now you know what's happened in New South Wales has been far from perfect, but you know chri's Mens's hard is in the right place and you know that he sees very clearly the moral clarity with which anti Semitism needs to be tackled, and that these are things that you've got to throw the book at, and you've got to throw the book at early. I often think that
running a country is rather like running a family. What do they tell you about young kids. Young kids crave boundaries. They want their parents to put the boundaries in and to enforce them. Societies need leaders to set boundaries and enforce them, and that's not what the Prime Minister did, and that's partly why we're in the mess we're in today.
How much has that come down to, do you think the fact that he is trying to pander to potential Greens voters.
Yeah, I think the Prime Minister is wedged on these issues. I think he is very conscious of the fact that there are Greens voters in inner city labor seats, that the Greens are eating his lunch, and so he hasn't been as strong and clear as he's needed to on this and I think that's a tragedy for the country. I think you need leadership where people are very clear about what is right and what is wrong. And the contrast between the Prime Minister and Peter Dutton on this point could not be clearer.
And the other thing that came out of this National Cabinet meeting during the week was the AFP saying that they were investigating, as a line of inquiry whether there could have been foreign actors involved in any of these anti Semitic attacks, suggesting that perhaps people had been paid by foreign actors to go and commit these crimes. Now, that was simply the AFP saying they were looking at it, that they didn't necessarily have any evidence of that.
Yet it was just.
A line of inquiry. The States weren't aware of that line of inquiry. The Prime Minister then took that and repeated it almost as though it were facts, saying, well, we've got to be serious about why some of these things are happening, and it would appear it is happening because people are being paid by foreign actors. What the AFP said and what the Prime Minister said are two very different things.
Because if you put the Prime minister spin on it, the government is not culpable for what's happened. And I think you know, if this is domestic terrorism, it is the government that is responsible for the failures to actually
deal with these things in a strong manner. But if it's a foreign actor, the government is also culpable because we should be seeing you, at the very least, ambassadors and diplomats being expelled from this country if there are foreign governments involved in this, and perhaps even other activities too.
Indeed, I mean it would not be surprising the idea potentially that there were foreign actors involved, because of course the idea is to sew division in Australia, and that is what has been allowed to prosper and it benefits other countries potentially to sow division in places like the West. The same as these protests very quickly that will be happening on the weekend on Australia Day, I mean pro Palestinian protesters marching down in Melbourne and potentially in Sydney
as well. They pick Australia Day to do that because they're not just protesting about war. They're protesting about broader Western values.
That's absolutely right, and I think each time they do that they lose more and more support because Australians look at this and say, why are these people importing a foreign conflict into our streets. I think most Australians want their city streets back.
These people have.
Made their point, They've been making the same point, and they've been making it in a violent and destructive manner for the last fifteen months. And I contrast them with the wonderful Ukrainian community who is always asking the government to do more, but never results to this sort of thing. It's wonderful gatherings, it's music, it's talks, it's people are on the ground, never any of this sort of behavior. The contrast couldn't be starker.
And of course there's a cease fin now, which is what they ask for all along.
And they're still.
Protesting, which I think goes to what they're really going on about killing Lisa. Thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks Caleb, still to come.
Three days to go until Australian Days. I was just talking about the career protesters and the Wope pubs.
They're up to old tricks.
I'll speak to a fed up Warren Mundine later in the program, but first, Queensland government workers are tasked with saving the state's energy grid by closing the blinds and turning off the air as they race for a forty plus degree day in summer.
Shocking, isn't it. That's with my panel.
Next, let's bring in my second panel of the evening. National Senate leader Bridget Mackenzie and scar News contributor Joe Hildebrand, who joins me here on the desk.
And this is interesting.
This is interesting Joe, because you're filling in for me tonight on the lake because I'm filling in for Showery. So I thought i'd better get you on to pretend to be me while I fill in.
You are actually interviewing yourself. Correct, it's like a reception.
I don't know I necessarily wanted me.
Maybe we're all just living in someone else's dream.
I have wondered at certain points whether we are living in a simulation, particularly on Monday when everything my clothes dryer broke, the front bumper fell off my car, like.
It would all happen.
That is like every second day.
Anyway.
If you know if it's a simulation, please let me know, because I'd like to have a bet on it.
Now.
Trump hasn't wasted any.
Time getting on with the job.
We saw him sign all those executive or orders the other and the deportations have begun. They've already risted hundreds of illegal immigrants. This is Trump's borders are Tom Homan on Fox News. He's an actual borders are this one Unlike Kamala Harris.
In the last twenty four hours, rusted over three hundred and eight, three hundred and eight serious criminals. Some of them were murderers, some of them were rapers, some of them reaped a child, some were a sexual soul of a child. So I says, doing their job, and they're prioritizing just as the President said they would, so I says, performing excellent right now out in the field, and they're going to continue every day.
Bridgid.
It's amazing watching actual political leadership play out in the Western world.
Yeah, Calob, I think Americans who voted for Trump will be very, very happy that he's delivering so quickly on his promises. He's spent that time between the election and the inauguration well, clearly has strong plans for implementation for his election and promises. And I think that's also going to go some way to re establishing trust with the electric more broadly, when you actually have leaders who mean what they say and then do what they say they're going to do, it's not rocket science.
No, indeed.
And this is the thing that I don't get Joe about why left wing governments can't wrestle with very simple concepts such as we don't want child rapists illegally in our countries.
And I get that.
You know, the Baden administration probably thought that Democrats would eventually benefit from people pouring over the border and then one day becoming a citizen because who were they going to vote for? Accept the Democrats?
But it didn't work.
No, that's right.
I mean, for one thing, I mean, the biggest mistake the Biden administration made was simply just leaving Trump's leaving Trump's policies in place and then pretending you're being far nice. I mean, that would have been a smart thing to do, and said they actually unwound them and created this giant nightmare for themselves. I don't know what else they thought would be coming. And that is true, it is not.
And there are a lot of people in the Labor Party who I talk to all the time who are just beside themselves about why people on the looney left think that it's humane to incentivize a death race over the high Seas to come to Australia and if you survive, you make it like it's sort of like a kind of macabre TV reality show. Likewise, you are if you are going to have a generous and humane immigration policy and a humanitarian immigration policy, which the US kind.
Of doesn't really have much at all.
Australia does much better. But you need to be able to control your borders and you need to be able to say, yes, you're good, come in, we're going to give you shelter and know you're a child abuser, get the hell out. And the other smart thing, of course, that Trump is doing is doing this all with such fanfare, literally on day one, so that all of his constituents, all his voters can see, oh my god. You know,
it's almost like it's changed overnight. And whatever happens in the future, and there will undoubtedly be complications, but people will remember that Trump did this on day one.
Thing.
Yes, he got tough on the board. So it's good politics and it's it's probably good policy as well.
It's just straight forward stuff because we will have our own migration part of some description here when it comes to the federal election, except that one will be over legal migration. But it will be an issue.
Now.
Shock horror, it's summer. It's hot in Queensland. I mean, next thing you'll find out that I drink too much read and I don't think it's the first time that this has happened. But their energy supplies are so dire that the government workers, the public servants are being asked to cut back on electricity to help prevent power outages. They've been told to turn off the second computer screen.
Service.
They'll have to draw all the blinds as if they weren't already doing that, so no one could see that they weren't doing any work. They'll only be able to have one printer in each office turned on and tear.
Down the air cons so they have to take off their cardigans.
It is just ridiculous.
Me. Queensland is a tropical state, bridge it gets hot in summer. This is not a new concept. If they cannot handle a forty degree day without public servants being told to do less work, less than they're already doing, to try and make the state not go into a blackout. I know we have these examples every summer now, but they keep happening every summer and we don't seem to do anything about it.
That's the scariest bit.
Yeah, Caleb, I think fragility of public servants and their productivity aside. I think the essential issue is just the fragility of our electricity grid and energy security.
Whether it is in.
The depths of a Queensland summer or the frigidity of a Melbourne winter. The fact that our electricity grid and energy security is so fragile at the moment is a grave concern.
It's not just in Queensland.
We heard the wa Premiere today say that blackouts are just part of the transition. And you've got a story in the OS tomorrow around the South Australian locking in two diesel generators to secure their own energy supply going forward. So this is actually a result of state and federal government under labor governments, pursuit of one hundred percent renewable without actually having a generator of reliable, affordable base load
going into the grid. So if you're going to remove the coal, you've got to replace it with something that's going to keep the air conditioners on, the computers going, our refrigerators running, etc. We're a modern industrialized country and that means we need to have a reliable.
And affordable energy supply.
It's one oh one and unfortunately, under state and federal labor governments energy policies, that's not happening and it's going to be our citizens that feel the consequences.
Well, you mentioned South Australian, it's diesel. I always love when this happens. You know, it's the renewable energy is unreliable. So we've got the environmentally friendly way to deal with that diesel. And now I want to get your thoughts on this quickly, Joe. Children in Victoria are going to be taught in schools now as young as ten years old about the dangers of vaping, because apparently this is the sort of age at which kids are starting to
pick up vaping. And I know, once upon a time it would have been a cigarette behind the bike shed.
We've sort of got the new version of that that is vaping.
But I find it hilarious that governments, both state and federal, that could have treated it in the same way as smoking and had a regulated legal market that would have stopped all these dodgy people selling them to kids in corner shops.
They couldn't do that.
They had to make it illegal, and now they're having to bring in programs to deal with the problem that they caused.
Yeah, I've got to say I agree with that. I am a reform smoker and i quit via vaping and I'm now for legit. I've got all my paperwork and my little prescription and everything, and it was heavily is to get. But it could have very easily. It's very boring to tell you what, kids, it's not anything I do is not cool, so just don't do it. But but yeah, it is it is nonetheless a real problem in schools, and I think that is the kind of problem when you have you have something that's sort of
illegal for everybody. Well, there's no incentive for the retailer to abide by the rules, and so you have them selling vapes can't launch. Everyone knows you can get them, and where you can get them. I've never gotten from a corner store, but you know, I'm told that it's
incredibly easy and you can see it. And whereas you know, you don't have that problem with alcohol, which is very heavily regulated, and the retailers know that they can make their money, but they also know that their neck is on the line if they're caught selling it to minors.
So to a certain extent, they regulate themselves, and the industry regulates itself and that and that's sort of where the government kind of in a funny way, ended up getting to anyway, after the Greens of all people said no, you shouldn't have done but it should just be sold in chemists anyway, But it is very it is very much a problem. My own kids get told at primary
school about the dangers of vaping. I went to a high school in western Sydney where the principal an awesome guy, fantastic bloke, big fan of mine obviously, but he had
to install vape detectors in the toilets. Yeah, because there were so many kids vaping in the toilets that other kids were actually refusing to go to the toilet at all during the school days because they didn't want to go in there, and inhale all the staff for you know, I have other people around, so it is very much a difficult problem at one and I.
Reckon there are regulatory ways they could have dealt with that before.
It device and that's it, and that's how, and they refuse.
To do it.
And here we are now, Bridget Joe, thank you so much for your time tonight.
Now, don't go anywhere.
Indigenous leader Warren Mundine is going to rip into the all of the Invasion day hysteria as they call it, in just a moment. Don't go away.
Now, you'll remember.
In December, Hong Kong owned pub group Australian Venue Co backflipped on its decision to boycott the Celebrations of Australia Date more than two hundred of its pubs following a public backlash Well, now they've backflipped on the backflip, which I can't imagine is terribly good for ones back calling January twenty sixth just a long weekend, Indigenous leader Warren
Mundine joins me. Now, Warren, you'd think they would have learnt their lesson the first time round, didn't they See what happened to Woolworth's last year.
Look, I just can't believe it, you know, you know, they just got to punch in the naise and so they're going to stick their head up and get punched in the naise again. Look, I'm getting sick, like all Australians, I'm getting sick and tired of people telling us what we should celebrate and what we shouldn't celebrate, and we should be celebrating Australia. And I'm on public record as saying, you know, I wanted to move the date so we
could all celebrate together. But what are in the last twelve months I've realized is that these people don't want to celebrate Australia. It could be any day of the year, any day of the month, and they're not going to celebrate it. In fact, they're going to talk, They're going to they just hate Australia. They just hate Australia. And I sit there and go, well, buggy is you know, We've got a lot to celebrate in Australia. And it's not about Arfur Philip or Captain Cork or anything like that,
even though they play a role in it. It's about us. In the last sixty seventy years, we have taken this country into an incredible, you know, amazing country. You know, we're overcoming our history. But you know, you know, fifty percent of Australia, over fifty percent of Australia now owned by Aboriginal people. Isn't that something to celebrate? You know, we in Mensies in sixty two gave Aboriginal people full
voting rights. Isn't that something to celebrate? In sixty seven the referendum, even though we were British subjects and Australian citizens, we were treated by the States and territories the second class. That referendum got rid of all the race laws in Australia. You know, isn't that's something to celebrate. All the migrants who have come to Australia post Second World War, escaping
wars and oppression and bigotry and everything. They come to Australia and build an economic future for themselves and their children and grandchildren. Isn't that something they celebrate? You know, We've got so much to celebrate here, and yet these people just want to hate.
And the point you made then about, you know, the fact that you could change the date and it's not going to change their point of view. That is the point now, and it's the reason that you'll have these pro Palestinian protesters join with the anti Australia Day protesters on Sunday in Melbourne to go after Australia Day, because it's not about the date. It's not about January twenty six, it's not about even colonization as a concept.
It's about Australia.
They do not like that Australia exists as the country that it is, and you could change the date to anything and it's not going to change what their fundamental problem is. And that is an issue with the West and Western values.
Yeah, one of the.
Things I love about free speech is that people actually then out themselves. What are the pro Palestinians having to do with protesting against Australia Day, You know, for God's sake. You think there's enough trouble in Gaza and other places around the Middle East for them to protest about.
But about having.
To get their stick there, you know, the little finger into what's happening in Australia. Look, the whole thing is just a load of crap. Melbourne, you look at Melbourne are going to do protests and everything down that has become the Australian capital of protests. What we should be doing is bringing the country together. Bringing Look, you know, I went to school in Auburn, you know, in Sydney
multicultural area, Turks, Lebanese, Maltese, Italians, everyone, Africans. Everyone was it in that commun you know, at the school with thirty nine kids in my class and thirty nine different nationalities in my class, you know, And you know, yes now and again we had a bit of a punch up in the school yard, but we all become mates. Here we are thirty years later, and I visit them in Brisbane and Canberra and Adelaide and every other place where they moved to and that, and we're still mates today.
And that should be celebrated. You know, there's a lot of things we should be celebrating and saying, what a wonderful country. If we're such a bad country, why are people risking their lives to get on rickety boats to come here? And why do millions of people want to come and live here? Is because we got we've got multicultural Australia, we've got multi ethnic groups, we've got multi faith boots, we've got even atheists. You know, we love
our atheists. And we're all here working together to make this country a better country.
And that's what we.
Should be celebrating. You know, we're the most one of the most liberal democracies with individual freedoms.
And liberties and that and opportunities.
We should be celebrating that. And and you know, these people.
You know, very sorry, we've we've run out of time. I've got to go to Paul, but you're one hundred percent right, and thank you so much for joining me tonight. And on that note, it's time for me to go. Here is Paul in the man Cove