Why on Sky News. This is Sharry.
Good Evening. Welcome to the show tonight. The Quanta scandal engulfing the Prime Minister could.
Get a whole lot worse.
I have breaking news in a moment on a bid to recall Alan Joyce to answer questions about the business class upgrades for his good mate.
Full coverage tonight.
The Queensland Labor Party has been booted from office, but there's one political party even more upset than Labor. More on that with My Political panel Cameron Milner and David Gazzard. Later also tonight, how Israeli female fighters took on the misogynistic I had told ers of Iran and won. I'll explain how this was one of the most sophisticated and complex military feats of our time. Plus the cousin of a nineteen year old hostage, Nama Levi, is on the
show tonight. She's still trapped in guys at Time tunnels, yet SBS dared to censor his interview where he fights to bring her home. Our expose on the Public Broadcaster continues, but first tonight. In breaking news, former Quantis chief executive Alan Joyce is set to be horn in front of a Senate inquiry to detail the free upgrades he gave.
His mate Anthony Alberzi.
This has become a massive scandal, Albanezi personally requesting twenty two free upgrades, including on a flight with his son from Sydney to Rome, that gift around ten thousand dollars. Collectively, the twenty two free upgrades would be worth.
Tens of thousands of dollars.
These special privileges were given to the PM dating back to his time as Transport Minister in the Rudd and Gillard governments, and it leads to questions about the decisions he's made over the years that benefited Quantus over rival airlines. Journalist Joe Aston has exposed a web of influence, alleging that Alan Joyce was basically Albanesi's personal travel agent.
When the man regulating your own industry deciding which airlines can fly into Australia and how often if he wants a free upgrade, what are you going to do? If Anthony Alberanezi had called the CEO WESPAC or A and Z and said, could you please put fifty thousand dollars in my account? Would that be okay? I have this weird thing where if you ask for a flight upgrade, it's not a bribe or you know, it can't be perceived as a potential conflict of interest, but there's a financial value to it.
Absolutely, that's an excellent point and Joe Aston will be on my show tomorrow night.
Now.
Our National's leader in the Senate, Bridget McKenzie told me today that given this new information, she is now investigating Alan Joyce to the Senate Inquiry to answer questions about these revelations. The accusation is that Albinizi may have put his own interests ahead of Australia's interests. He's denied rival International airlines more flights into Australia, but this would have brought down airfares. Joyce has become one of the most
disliked executives in corporate Australia. As you know, he supported the Voice with Quantas giving around three hundred and seventy thousand dollars and as you recall, Alan Joyce held this press conference alongside alber Easy and we know that.
This will make it a big difference and a step in the right direction for reconciliation.
In this country.
So now can I call on the Prime Minister of Australia, the Honorable Antony alban Easy to say a few words.
Take it.
While Alan Joyce was supporting his mate's pet project. We all had no idea just how cozy their relationship was.
Now.
Quanta's offers Chairman's Lounge membership to all politicians, to judges, executives, celebrities and senior public servants, but Albanesi had special access. Joyce organized for his son to have chairman's lounge access, a gift that Albanesi reportedly didn't declare in the Pecuniary
Interest Register. Joe Asen says, I'm not saying now that there is an established causation between Albanesi getting a chairman's membership for his son and Qatar Airways, for example, being blocked from flying more.
Frequently into Australia.
But what it does do is raise a lot of questions.
Now.
Albanzi at first refused to take questions about all of this. On Saturday, he only wanted international questions, and then.
He quickly ended his press conference, and.
Then yesterday he just couldn't avoid speaking about it because it has become a major political issue. Instead, he played the victim. He claimed his family was being targeted.
I think that people's families shouldn't be the subject of targeting.
Well, that's just nonsense. This is a public interest story. As I said, Joe Aston.
Will be on the show tomorrow.
But it's like groundhog Day with labor ministers having to defend the Prime Minister yet again, first over his cliff top mansion, now over flight upgrades.
Well, let's go to the heart of the matter. Has the Prime Minister complied diligently, transparently, consistently about declaring any upgrades. Yes, he has, And I know from personal experience that the Prime Minister is a fundamental believer in transparency.
It's appropriate that the arrangements are robust. I know that the Prime Minister was asked about this, I think multiple times yesterday and his press conference. I don't have anything to add to it.
I don't think it's any surprise that in the role of Transport and Infrastructure Ministry you'd be traveling a lot.
Coalition MPs weren't buying these excuses, and Peter Darton said Albin Easy had questions to answer.
Sometimes there are oversights and the rest of it. There's human error involved. But when you're talking about having a personal phone call to ask for an upgrade as the Transport Minister or the shadow Transport Minister. I presume the Prime Minister is going to answer questions about that I'm in strange arrangements when you can pick the phone up to the CEO and ask is the Transport Minister for an upgrade?
This is all a question of integrity. Most Australians struggled to afford even an economy airfare. They'd never be able to afford the luxury of business class.
It's out of our reach. Can Albanezi truly be.
Impartial when it comes to making decisions about quantus when he's been getting tens of thousands of dollars worth.
Of free upgrades to business Class.
The revelation puts the decisions he made as Transport Minister and as Prime Minister under a cloud and aside from the integrity issues, which are the most important. But aside from the integrity issues, this revelation is also politically lethal. Alban Easy took care to curate a self image of a housing commissioned boy who made it, but now the perception is cementing of a long term polly enjoying the perks of public office.
Former Labor State.
Secretary Cameron Milner, he's going to be on my show tonight, and he writes in The Nightly that.
Alban Ezy would have voters believe.
That twenty eight years of being in Parliament brings judgment and experience. But in stout, Albertezi looks like he's been wallowing in the freebies all while sucking down hard on the teat of the taxpayer. Free Taylor Swift tickets, free Grand Final tickets, free flight upgrades. That's before he had access to his own plane, which he's dubbed Toto I after his dog, and now also a clifftop mansion where AE hundred million dollars of taxpayer funds.
Will upgrade the road that leads to it.
If this all sounds bad to us, imagine how Labor members are reacting to the revelations, along with families who were truly struggling to survive in this cost of living crisis. It's no wonder that Labor and PS have had enough of the embarrassing headlines their largest loving leader is bringing on the party. Now to the Middle East, Israel finally retaliated against Iran over the weekend, Saturday morning, our time. Young female fighters were part of Israel's assault on Iranian
military targets. You can see them here on aircraft going into battle. The beauty of having young women fighting shoulder to shoulder with Israeli men as they launched strikes against
the military sites of the misogynistic Iranian regime. A regime where the Ayatolas don't allow women to show their face they need to wear hijab headscarfs at all times, where women who protest, who dare to protest against this, have been beaten to death and executed, Where morality police enforce a strict interpretation of Sharia law, where women are often the victims of unjust violence. Even the United Nations admits that the Iranian government has only intensified its efforts to
repress the rights of women. Well, the iyatolders would have despised seeing the Israeli defense forces release photographs of beautiful young women, their long hair visible not covered by hedge apps flying planes into battle. They were the pilots, and this operation was utterly extraordinary. Israel strikes in Iran haven't been fully understood for just how sophisticated they were, and for how they now lay the groundwork for future strikes
on Iran's nuclear sites. Now, this was the first time that Israel had entered a thirtier country where it doesn't have a mutual border, and the challenge of doing this can't be underestimated.
It's not like flying from Sydney to Canberra.
Israel had to remove the threat between the airspace in between Israel and Iran from Syria and Iraq. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Israel had to take out air defenses in Syria and Iraq, clearing the way for its flight path to Iran. Secondly, Israel attacked Iran's air defenses so that they could.
Then proceed unchallenged.
And Thirdly, Israel struck keynodes in Iran's ballistic missile production and they hit a military target in Parshan, so they weren't just in Tehran, and in Parshan that's where Iran has worked on nuclear weapons.
My understanding is that.
The Israeli aircraft actually went into Iranian airspace. This is incredible courage from those young fighters, but also what a feat for Israel to pull this off with all planes returning home safely.
They are truly heroes.
Now we don't know for sure, but the working assumption is that Iran will now respond in some form.
But Israel has.
Shown that it has the means and the measure to severely attack Iran and successfully so, and it's learnt lessons for how to do so when it inevitably tackles the nuclear threat. But I have to say this, Iran poses a threat to all of us. The ballistic missiles that were fired towards Israel recently can reach nearly every capital in Europe, and if Iran is allowed to continue its development of nuclear capability, if it does develop a nuclear weapon,
this could even reach us in Australia. This is the international community's responsibility to eliminate the nuclear threat from Iran. This shouldn't just be left for Israel to single handedly deal with.
In another sign of just how.
Weak Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are, they want Israel to stop fighting around and they seem content to allow Tehran to continue developing nuclear weapons. How else can you read their comments calling for de escalation after Israel strikes, It looks did anything.
Out of the military target.
I hope with this year, of course, we maintain the importance of supporting Israel's right to defend itself, and we are also very adamant that we must see de escalation in the region going forward. This war must end. We must get the hostages out and work toward a two state solution de escalation.
My hope is this will end.
It used to be America that was strong. The United States was the tough world leader dealing with terrorism and
evil regimes. But not anymore. It seems the international community wants to turn a blind eye to Iran's nuclear development instead of supporting and joining Israel in the fight against Iran to protect all of us globally, the international community again calls for de escalation and cease fire at the precise time when Iran is at its most vulnerable, with its proxy terror groups on their knees and their air
defenses taken down on the weekend. It's only a matter of time before America we'll have to wake up and deal with the nuclear threat. And it can't only be the Israeli Prime Minister Benjaminette and Yahoo battling this evil regime on behalf of the West. Right now, let's bring in tonight's panel Perth, Mayre, Basil, Zemplus and Sky News contributor Joe Hildebrand.
Welcome to you both. I want to get your feedback on both of those topics.
Let's start with the quantus scandal surrounding Anthony Albanisi.
Joe.
These twenty two upgrades that Albanezi received from Alan Joyce. We're hearing that not all of them were political trips, some were family holidays.
I mean, as many.
Coalition MPs said today, this doesn't pass the pup tests.
No.
I think the best you can say about this is that it happened a long time ago. It's clearly not a good look. It comes obviously on the back of the more recent and actual, in real time purchase of the house in Copa Cabana on the New South Wales Central Coast. So I think Albo has to be much more careful about how he presents. He's got to understand that when the country is doing it tough, he has
to be seen to be doing it tough. He's got to wear a hair shirt on behalf of the country, even though he himself may be very happy and in a love bubble with Jody. And that's fantastic, and that's great, and I'm genuinely happy for him, but when people are suffering, it's just simply not a good look. Even if the amounts of money, or even if in the case of the house thing it's completely immaterial, it doesn't affect the rest of it. But you know, in politics, perception is everything.
The good news is in terms of the housing I understand that the government is not going to touch negative gearing and that is something real and tangible that we should all be that homeowners should be grateful for and renters as well because it will encourage investment. But for this stuff to come up is obviously not a good look and hopefully the government and ALBO will be able to put it behind them and move on to more substantial things.
I mean, as I said at the start, their basil, this is an integrity issue and we know that the Albanezy government blocked Qatar Airways bids for more flights to come into Australia at the time.
This would have lowered the airfares that there.
Are such an extraordinary high airfares at the moment, So there are questions of an integrity nature here for the Prime Minister to answer.
Well, by the actions of the Prime minister, that's why we have those questions of integrity, and clearly that press conference with Joyce and the Prime Minister one after the other speaking it does look like a cozy relationship and a couple of questions. I mean, it was an extraordinary amount of flying that the Prime Minister was doing, albeit all declared occasionally, I have had an upgrade, and good
luck to anyone who gets an upgrade. We celebrate that person that gets called forward and gets bumped up the front. But it seems like the Prime Minister was getting one for every single flight that he was taking. That's not normal. The other thing is did the Prime Minister's son deserve the chairman's lounge membership? Now he may well have. He may have had enough going on in his own career that he deserved it, But I guess I'd say this
as well. Just imagine, just imagine it was one of Scott Morrison's children when he was Prime Minister, albeit a little younger. But imagine if it was Scott Morrison's child who had the Quantus Chairman's Lounge membership. Imagine what people would be saying.
Men exactly, I don't think anyone at twenty two years old could.
Say that they have had a career warrants.
Certainly, the lounges I was in when I was twenty years old are very very different to the Chairman's lounge. They were much much tingier and smokier, and.
Let's hope it sure they were, Joe.
But just quickly, before we get to the Queenside election, I want to ask your thoughts and what I had to say about how the urine around nuclear threat does affect all of us around the world, and yet it's Israel who's having to deal with it.
At the moment.
Yeah, I can't.
I can certainly understand why you would want to see some kind of, you know, as much sort of prestrision as you can muster when it comes to civilian casualties in Gaza or in Lebanon, Suden Lebanon. But going after Iranian military targets, I mean, that is just Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader. That is the simplest moral decision anyone could possibly make. The Fact that Israel is even able
to do this is, as you said, just phenomenal. And the fact they're able to do this to hit only military targets in Iran and come back out again I mean, there is absolutely no possible good cause, no possible decent purpose, that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard will ever be put to. They have been a despotic, theocratic, theocratic, fascist dictatorship ever since the nineteen seventy nine revolution, and anything you can do to harm their power is a good thing for
all of humankind. So I don't see how anyone could have moral qualms about.
It, exactly.
All right, let's turn to the Queensland election results. And as you know, David Chris Ifaley has officially been sworn in as Queensland's premiere.
Now on Saturday night.
We saw Stephen Miles claim that the L and P would struggle to form a majority, That's what he said, and yet they've done just that. At the latest count the LNP has won fifty one seats to Labour's thirty three, and we're expecting LL ANDP to get to fifty three seats, So Labour lost thirteen seats.
This is not a quick result.
The Catters will have three seats. Independence and Greens just won and at this point seventy percent around there votes have been counted. Now, Basil, what do you make of this spend that the L andp didn't do so well given they have one with a governing majority.
It was an unbelievable rewriting of history on the run, wasn't it. In fact, history hadn't even been written, and it was being rewritten before we got there. Extraordinary from the premiere as he was at that moment with a concession speech that forgot just one thing, and that was the concession. But the really damning blow, I thought, was or to go with that information which was clearly at worst in the balance, at best, just a flat out
lie to say they cannot form a majority government. Outrageous. Hold your speech until you know whether that is in play or not or so we don't know with any certainty as yet. Tomorrow we might know, but look, writing is incredible. They have an eighteen seventeen sixteen seat majority over the Labor Party. That's a big victory in anybody's book. And I'll tell you what I am running soon. If I got that sort of victory, that would do me every day of.
The week, one one hundred percent.
And I've always said, I think we can end up seeing you as as premier one day, Vasil, not just Lord mayor Joe. You know, Stephen Miles sees the leadership from anastagia Paliche, claiming that he would have a better chance of winning.
Yet with this result, what do you think of that claim?
Now, look, it's gone better than expected, but that doesn't tell you that it's gone well, or that Chris A fully the l and peperform badly. That just tells you how dire the expectations was. They thought it was going to be a repeat of the famous tirago where you could sit, you know, the entire ALP caucus around the kitchen table, and it wasn't that. And maybe that's an exercise in really good management of expectations. But Stephn Miles, you know, okay, say save the furniture, all right, find
no problem. Now, he's got to get out of the way, allow the party an opportunity to reset and refresh. There is no way it's going to be competitive if you've still got him hanging around. It's clear that he is a handbrake on Labour's popularity. He's only there because he's got the backing of the left wing union.
Do you think he should go now?
Absolutely? Absolutely?
I think him staying on his opposition leader as an incredible so you're not.
Buying that he ran a good campaign. You're just not.
I think the campaign was better than the absolute, you know, disaster that it could have been, and that's fine. But having done that, for him to then stay on and say no, I'm still going to keep the good is that is either incredibly naive or incredibly narcissistic. And for the sake of the party, for the good of the party, he needs to go, and he needs to go now and give another leader the chance to hit reset and try to bring the party back.
All right, Joe who ad a brown Basil Zemplers, thank you both so much for yours. Now let's turn to the US presidential race, because it's about nine days to go. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris fighting to the finish line. The focus clearly on battleground states. We saw on the weekend that Kamala Harris continued.
Her blitz in Philadelphia.
Donald Trump put on a splashy rally at Madison Square Garden in.
New York, and let's bring you now for more analysis. Sky News contributor Kosher Gada.
Kosher, Now, this was an interesting choice to have a rally in New York, and it certainly grabbed headlines. What were the takeouts for you and what's the strategy behind this decision?
Great Vihari, you know, I think it's sort of psychology and optics were To me, it looks like the ultimate flex or. It's a microclosm of where the res and the dynamics of the restand as we sit here today, which is a team Trump is on offense. The other side seems to be on defense, trying to go and defend voter blocks that are typically very advantageous to Democrats, such as blacks and Hispanics and minorities and women versus here going into deep blue New York and just showing
that offensive move. I think it's also about the lineup, and it shows the realignment that has happened. It's quite stunning in this campaign with RFK Junior, Chelsea Gabbard, doctor Phil who's his daytime talk show hosts, all sorts of people coming out. And I think the third thing is that it really is normalizing what it could mean to support Trump openly. These are people from other spheres of life, and it's just a big contrast to some of the framing on the other side of He's a fascist and
Hilarian and all of that. I think that's what this was about, and just showing that they can, even though they will probably not win New York, they can fill up an arena of twenty thousand people in deep blue New York.
Though it hasn't, of course, stopped the claims that Trump is a fascist, because now the Democrats are saying the fact that he held the rally at this place that once had hitless supporters somehow means Trump is the anime, even though they have been countless pop stars who've held events right in that space. I mean, it's completely ludicrous that claim.
Now, over the.
Weekend, we saw Michelle Obama come out and she had this bizarre line where she said that Donald Trump wasn't doing proper interviews, when in fact it's Kamala Harris who isn't sitting down for serious scrutiny.
Apart from that one interview.
With Brett Bayer and in fact, Donald Trump spent three hours on Joe Rogan's podcast. I'm sure everyone he has heard of him. If not, he's one of the most, if not the most popular podcasts internationally and certainly in the US. Let's have a listen to some of that interview.
I picked some people that I shouldn't have picked. I picked a few people that I shouldn't have picked.
And neo cohns, Yeah, Neo khans or.
Bad people or disloyal people or people that were just people there people that advice, Yeah, I mean kosher.
You can't hide yourself and three hour interview. You can't write learn answers. What did you think were the main revelations from that podcast?
You know, it's interesting because Trump is probably the most famous human being on planet Earth by this point, and before he entered politics, he was already a very well known developer and media personality in the US. So the thing about the podcast format is it allows how do you take somebody like that that is so well known and everybody has an opinion about him, good, bad, or ugly and reveal a new layer or a new dimension.
And very few mediums can do that, certainly cable TV and presidential debates and even rallies that are more scripted, canned. And here, you know, he can bob and weave between different topics. He actually calls it the weave where they went from irrigation policy in Iowa to our space aliens correct or not to a cultural question about UFC and everything in between. And it just showed a lot of personality ability to just hold all sorts of details in
his mind and have opinions about them. And again, I think to the earlier point, just come across as a normal, likable, conversational guy, which is in itself such a big deal given the way he's been framed for the better part of the last decade.
Kochha, just before you go, can you give us an update of where the polls were sitting at the moment for both candidates.
Still razor tight. There's a little bit of movement, a couple actually that were favorable to Kamla, but overall they're in the margin of error or Trump is up in all of them. I think at this point, along with Poles, you've got to look at the whole picture. Betting markets seemed to be heavily favoring Trump, battleground state polls and early voting seemed to be the momentumus with him. But nine days is a week in politics, and I think the bottom line is anything can still.
Happen, all right.
Indeed, Kosha Gata, thank you so much for joining us. And we'll have full coverage of the US election every night on the show for the next week. Now after the break, if Labor had a bad Queensland election, it was goodbye to bad rubbish with the great So I'm going to speak about.
This with Cameron Milner and David Gazard.
Next plus is the Albanezi government seriously blaming Israel and Jews for our high inflation. James Patterson is coming up on the show and he lays into this outrageous and inaccurate claim. Don't miss his fiery interview. Welcome back, Well, plenty more to discuss. Let's bring in now Tonight's political panel, former Howard government advisor David Gazard and former chief of staff to Bill Sholton.
Cameron Milner, welcome to you both.
Well, let's return to Anthony Albanese's quantus saga. This is a scoundal that's just going to get bigger and bigger.
As the week goes on. I've got Joe Aston on the show tomorrow night.
Cameron, you've written another scathing article in The Nightly tonight about this very topic. Do you agree the perception is now cementing that the Prime Minister just likes sa freebie.
Well it's this is a huge scandal because we all know he's been up for the free tickets, the free lunchers and everything else. But this is him actually getting personal benefit, personal benefit that we could actually monetize. We know how much a cost to get a ready deal on Quotas and how much a first class ticket to
London costs, and that's what he was training. He was bringing up his personal agent, personal travel agent, who happened to be the CEO of Coutus, Alan Joyce, rang him up to get this arranged not once, but twenty two times at least that we already know about. So this was about personal benefit for him while he was a Transport minister, while he was the chief regulator of Quotas, holding other people out of the market and benefiting Quotas.
This is a scandal, an absolute scandal. And the Albanese family with the Chairman's lounge everything else too, it's just continued on even after he's got Toto one sharing. So absolute scandal and a personal benefit to the Prime Minister as a crew here which we can monetary value.
That's the problem, David.
There's also the integrity issues, which is hi This is a matter of public interest because it raises questions about the decisions that Albanizi made that affected Quantas and other rival airlines, both when he was Transport Minister and Prime Minister David Gazzart.
Yes, absolutely, and you've seen the Coalition starting to seize on this and they're making the very obvious point. Well, hang on a second. What was mentioned in your frequent discussions with Alan Joyce while you were Transport Minister. How did that relationship carry forward and how did that affect Quantison's status when Qatar was looking to enter the marketplace and what would have been the flow on benefits to the cost of airline tickets for every Australian Should there
have been more competition in the sector. So suddenly it's Anthony Alberesi with his cliff top mansion, Anthony Alberesi with his upgrades, but everyone else paying higher prices for their airline fares in a cost of living crisis. So this is bad. I agree with kem on this. The other thing that sort of stuns me on this is this is the second bite at this story where his son as a member of the Quannis Lounge has been mentioned.
He's still a member. I mean, most sensible politicians, were they to upgrade the significant other into the plus one status, would have said, look, sorry, Nathan, you're out of the Chairman's twenty two. Your chairman, you've been there for a while, but I'm sorry, it's all over. He's still there. St Anthony Albanezi has decided to keep pursuing the gravy train for his son's benefit. Just fight the views of Australian voters all the way through.
That's utterly extraordinary and sure the cost of living crisis, go for it.
Cameron, I was.
Going to say, this is the absolute sense of entitled to this guy. I mean, twenty eight years in the Parliament and he can't see the conflict. Can't see the conflict here because it's all down to, as David said, his personal benefit, where the rest of us as consumers have to put up with.
Contas yeah, and being on hold for hours at a time and then getting call centers and you can't.
Get through it. It's canceled exactly.
Not to mention the flight credits issue, I'll get stuck into that tomorrow night with Joe Aston. Now let's talk about the Greens result at the Queensland election.
I mean the Greens thought.
They were going to pick up a multiple more seats in a Brisbane.
They ended up losing one of their two seats.
This was humiliating Cameron and somehow Federal Green Green's leader Adam Bound is trying to blame labor for all of this.
He should only look at his own backyard because he's no longer an environment party. He's a party of extremism, extremism on his lamb, and a disgusting anti Semitic party, and voters are onto them. Shari voters are onto them. They don't like what they say about Israel, they like what they say about Jews. And the Greens are an
extreme political party and voters have rejected them. They voted against the me Act, They voted because in Queensland and even in the Melbourney Council elections day the Greens tanked.
What do you think, David?
Do you think the voters are just turning off the Greens.
Look, their policies have been extremist and if you're going to run with the big dogs in the Fed Parliament, you've got to be able to stand on your own two feet. There's no point turning around and pointing at Anthony Alberanezi or others that have attacked them because their base is under threat by the Greens and saying, oh, it's all their fault. You have to go out and
prosecute your own case. You've got to make the case as to why you've been blockading MP's officers and supporting the CFMU at the most despicable moment in that trade union's history. These are the things they've done. You've got to stand up and argue for your policies and if you let others define you, well, you've got no one to blame but yourselves.
Well.
The Liberals, meanwhile, have launched an ad campaign warning voters about the risks of electing a tial's have a look.
Since the last election till independent MP's have voted most of with the Greens, followed by Labor. Teal MP's voted with the Greens against tougher laws to stop criminals getting visas. Teal MPs want higher taxes, including on capital gains, housing and a higher GST. What would that mean for our economy? The next election will be close, with many commentators predicting a hung parliament. Are Labor Greens Teals minority government.
Don't risk it, Cameron, this is the big question whether the support for the Teals is going to remain at the next federal election.
What do you think, Well, I think we see at the state level the Teal voters come back, so certainly the Liberal vote is returning in those seats. Whether it will be enough is a question, and whether althey Albanies will do a dirty preference deal like you did last time to try to get Teals elected just so he can stay Prime Minister. Because Albo doesn't care if it's a minority government as long as he's PM. That's the
price he wants to pay. And he's quite happy to see as many Greens as many Teals have the whippand over legislation, as long as he keeps the keys. So the lodge and obviously the phone called Alan Joyce Andancotas.
David, how are you reading this?
I mean you were formerly very senior in John Howard's office. A lot of the Teal vote initially was because people didn't want to support Scott Morrison ahead of the last election. So do you think there might be some who don't.
Get back in.
Look, this is a phenomenon that has been around for a while. It's not just the Teals. When I was working for John Howard, it was the start and the resurgence of Pauline Hanson in One Nation that caused John Howard the heartburn at that time. Prior to that was the Democrats. We've seen Clive Palmer come forward. So the Teals of the latest iteration of people parking their votes because they're protesting about something, and often the public debate
and the polity moves on. The big thing for the Teals at this election I think is going to be to decide which which way they may go should there be a big, big swing to the Coalition, which looks likely. I mean, I don't think anyone's sort of saying that that Peter Dunton is going to win in his own right like Steven Miles did over the weekend. But you mean, sorry,
christophid over the weekend. That's right. But they're going to be faced with the decision, are we like Rob Oakshot and Tony Windsor who went the wrong way as independence and back Julia Gillard and lost their electorates at the
two thousand and what was it thirteen election? Yeah, or are we going to actually be smart about Bob Kattock, Because there are some independents that have stuck around for a long time and they know which way the win's blowing, and they can discern the views of their voters, and they're very canny about picking it. This will be an
important election for the Teals. It also shows that Peter Dutton has figured out he cannot win this election by just focusing on out of metropolitan seats and shoring up those those regional seats where labor made gains at the last election. He has to win some of those to your seats back, and clearly this advertising campaign is a sign that he's marked out that territory, recognizing that yeah, yes, that's right, is one you can win in.
Yeah, really good points there, right, David Gazard, Cameron Milner, thank you both, really appreciate your time. Now still to come that the Abenezi government has failed to deal with the radical Islamic hate.
Preachers, so now community groups are taking legal action.
I'll speak about this breaking story with James Patterson. Plus I'll speak with a cousin of one young hostage still.
Held captive in Gaza.
Yet his interview was censored by the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.
That's right after the break, welcome back. Well.
For more than a year, the family of Nama Levy has been doing everything in their power to free her from the dungeons in Gaza. She was only ninety when she was kidnapped. She would have spent her twentieth birthday in unimaginable.
Horrific conditions.
And I've spoken with former hostages who told me directly that women are being beaten, raped and starved. Well here in Sydney, Australia, NAMA's cousin Zack has been pushing for her release, and he did an interview with SBS, but the broadcaster refused to publish it. I understand that SBS took a transcript. The managers took a transcript, They highlighted
the lines that they thought were problematic. They told the journalist I met Rehak that he couldn't run it on his show, and they dumped the print out in the bin. The journalists managed to retrieve and save a copy of the interview that he completed with NAMA's cousin Zak, and here's a.
Snippet of that.
Before October seventh, the plan was for my uncle and I hunted to come and visit us in Australia. They are amaz They are Ayeleza parent parents and the plan was for them to come and visit us in Australia and travel in Australia. And after what happened on October seventh, we spoke to them and we said that they will come to Australia with Nama and that is the plan. And you know for that to mean, we must return all the hostages.
Now that interview was complete and ready for broadcast just a few days before SBS pulled it. I asked SBS Corporate Affairs about this and they said in a statement, the Zaki Shaka interview did not air because mister Riehak had not completed the story at the.
Time of his resignation. This is not a case of censorship.
SBS appreciates the time and insights provided by mister Shaka, and SBS Hebrew intends to return to and complete the piece when the program recommences. This version of events is strongly disputed. I've got in my possession a copy of the completed interview.
I've just played a clip from it to you now.
Now, I would never censor an interview with the family of a current hostage.
So I'm pleased to say that Zach joins me live now here in studio.
Zach, thank you so much for your time, thank you for having me, and I'm so sorry to hear what you're all going through. Can you start by telling us what happened to your cousin Nama on October seven last year.
Yeah, so, I'm sure everyone saw the video of Nama dragged from the back of the car, the back of the jip into the restat of the of the JIP that was published live broadcast by the terrorist and I saw it on that day. It was very hard to identify that this is Nama. Obviously it's been a few years since I saw her since we moved to Australia. But after we got the news, that was shocking.
And so she was kidnapped.
She was nineteen, but she was you know in Israel, everyone who every young person has to join the army. So she was working as a as an Israeli soldier when she was kidnapped.
Yes, so she arrived at that base just a couple of days before the attack on the attack on Israel. And yes, she was kidnaped from there, and you know, like any other eighteen years old teenager, it is compulsory, you have to go to the army. And that's one of the things that we were talking about on the podcast.
Yeah, that podcast never ran. Amitri Haack says the interview was pulled, scrapped. He wasn't given permission to run it. What's your response to this censorship by a taxpayer funded public broadcaster in Australia.
Look, the purpose of the broadcast was very clear to raise the awareness of, you know, the situation. We need to release, We need the hostage to be released, you know, yesterday and we spoke about that. We spoke about Nama what she achieved. She was a peace activist. She went to the US with Israeli and Palestinians kids for discussions about peace and how the two people can live together.
Then we spoke about Penny One visiting Israel by this but decided not to visit the southern area when all other foreign minister decided to go and visit the Kiboz seams. They're very disappointed, Yeah, very disappointing.
Do you think the Australian government's doing enough to help the hostages? They're still around one hundred hostages being helped in the tunnels of Gaza.
Your cousin Nama Levi one of them.
All we hear from Albanisi and Petty Wang is for a ceasefire. Why aren't they putting pressure on Qatar to force the release of the hostages.
Yeah, so that's not clear. I don't know why. For eleven months, Isabella's firing missiles on Israel and they said nothing. But now after Israel started to respond to these attacks, they immediately called forces fire regarding the hostages. Yeah, they need to put pressure on every anyone who can impact the negotiation and close the deal release the hostages.
Yeah, all right, Zach, thank you very much for joining us. Really appreciate your strength. And we're all praying that Nama comes home safe.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Now still to come.
The Albenzi government has dared to suggest that Israel and Jews are to blame for inflation not coming down in Australia.
Well, how credible is this? Came when claim when.
The IMF shows that inflation is falling globally but just not in Australia. James Patterson is going to fire up about this after the short break. Well, the Albanezy government is blaming Israel's war on terror for inflation staying high in Australia. This is despite the IMF releasing forecasts showing that Australia is expected to record the second highest inflation
rate out of forty two countries next year. Well, my friend and colleague Aaron Molin couldn't have said it better when she said this.
Is he saying that Jews fighting jihadis is responsible for inflation?
Sounds like it.
I suspect he needs to look just a little closer to home.
Jews fighting jihadists responsible for inflation unbelievable. Let's bring in now shutter Home Affairs Minister James Patterson. James, what do you think about this claim? Given the IMF forecast?
Shari?
I thought Australia was in trouble under the Albanezy labor government, but it turns out it's even worse than I feared. Because Jim Chalmer's plan to bring inflation down in Australia relies on peace in the Middle East. It relies on Harmass and the Hooties and Hesbalah and Iran to stop their genocidal war on his It also relies on Israel giving up on trying to flee their hostages or giving
up on removing Hesbuler's rockets aimed at their cities. And of course all of this is an elaborate political ruse by the government to try and distract Australians from their own failings. But as you point out, the IMF believes will have the second highest inflation in the world next year.
Our like minded democracies are all cutting interest rates, whether it's the United States or Canada, or New Zealand or the United Kingdom, and in Australia there seems like there's no hope in sight if you listen to the RBA. So Jim Chalmers should take responsibility for his own failings, stop trying to blame everyone else for inflation, which is a home grown phenomenon.
Well, Sir James, look, we've seen that the Albanezy government and state governments have just failed to deal with radical.
Islamic hate preachers. Well.
Now Alexi Dimitriadi and he's been doing excellent reporting in the Australia and he's reporting that a Jewish community group is now taking one radical cleric to the federal over his sermons where he's calling the Jewish community vile and treacherous people. James, why is it up to community groups to fight this hatred and incitement to violence?
Well, unfortunately, char it's because the Albanesi government has abandoned the Jewish community and we now have the profoundly unjust situation where the Jewish community is expected to take its own civil action to enforce the law and deal with this hatred instead of the federal government using the criminal system to take action to protect all of the community against extremist hate preachers. It is a crime to incite
violence against other communities. These people should be charged and convicted in the courts instead of being asked to bankroll and bear the burden of their own legal action to try and deal with this problem. And it's because labor has vacated the field.
The law should be there for everyone, not just for some people. And you know, I don't want to get into the whole Candice Owen saga now, but this is one instant since where Tony Burke is prepared to fight anti Semitism, but he won't lift a finger when it's hate preachers in his own backyard. James, I want to ask you about Iran's ambassador to Australia. He's back in the news, this time for calling Israel's retaliatory strikes on Iran.
A terror attack.
What do you make of these comments and what do you think Pennywong should do about it?
Well, this is yet more inflammatory and irresponsible rhetoric from the Iranian ambassador. He's been hauled into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trades many times now for a cup of tea. It clearly is looking for another free cup of tea of the Australian taxpayer because he hasn't been intimidated and his behavior hasn't changed on any of the previous occasions. Think the question for the Albanezer government is
are there any limits for foreign ambassadors in Australia? Is there anything that they could do which would require them to be sent back home? It appears on their watch the answer is no, and they can behave with complete impunity.
If it was up to you, if you were in government now, you were the Home Affairs Minister instead of Tony Burke, would you be encouraging the Iranian ambassador to be sent out?
Well, we have publicly previously said on multiple occasions we think he has overstayed his welcome and overstepped his mark. In addition to that, we've said that the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, should be listed as a terrorist organization because they are the largest sponsor of Hamas and the
Hootis and Hesbala and others in the region. So you can expect tough action from the Dutton government on the Iranian regime because they are the primary destabilizer of that region, the primary sponsor of the war in Israel.
Just on Iran, we saw on Saturday morning our time that Israel did carry out strikes.
Against Iran, as we just mentioned. Do you think that at.
Some point the international community is going to have to come together and deal with the nuclear threat?
What Israel was entirely justified in responding to those direct acts of aggression from Iran on two pres occasions. Iran previously attacked Israel only through proxies, but is now openly doing so. And it is in all of our interests that deterrence is reinforced and that Iran is put back in its box, that it is not emboldened, because they threaten the stability of not just Israel, but the entire region.
And the world. And it is Israel which is bearing that burden alone, I think, because the international community has failed to reign in the Iranian regime and they are behaving with impunity, and it's understandable what Israel feels, as the state most threatened by that, that they have to take action in their own self defense.
Well said, Well said James Patterson. Thank you very much for your time as always, and I'll see you tomorrow night at eight o'clock. Right now, here's Paul back from Queensland and in the man Cave.