Why.
On Sky News This is Sharry Good Evening.
Tonight, Dutton calls for an inquiry, claiming the Prime Minister wasn't trusted to be briefed on the terror threat of the caravan filled with explosives. I'll speak about this with Sarah Henderson Israeli Prime Minister benjaminette Yah, who says Trump's vision for Gaza is the first good idea he's heard and should be pursued.
My thoughts on this in a minute.
And Google Dump's diversity hiring targets and yet another sign we're seeing the end of the woke era. Matt Canavan and Caroline Marcus will be here to discuss, Plus will cross Live to London for the latest on the Sam Kerk case. She's now claiming she was treated differently because of her own skin color. And James Willis will join me with the news from Antoinette Latoufe's lawsuit against the ABC.
But first tonight, Peter Dutton has demanded iniary into why the Prime Minister was kept in the dark about the major terror threat of the caravan of explosives. Albanesi has repeatedly refused to say when he was briefed on this but The Australian reports that the Prime Minister and the Attorney General Mark Dreyfuss were only briefed on the same day the story went public. Now, the caravan contained enough
powergel explosives to create a forty meter blast wave. It had the addresses of the Great Synagogue and the Jewish Holocaust Museum inside, and Peter Dutton has said this could have been Australia's largest mass casualty event. Thank god it wasn't. This is a matter of national security. Extra measures needed to be taken to protect the community. Yet the Prime Minister only found out about this major terror threat days after it was uncovered, and nine days after Premier Chris Mins was briefed.
Darton says there now needs.
To be an inquiry into why the Prime Minister didn't know about this matter of critical importance.
How can we conceive of a position where the Prime Minister of our country is not aware of a planned mass terrorist attack that could have resulted in a forty meter blast zone and hundreds of people losing their lives. I think they're reasonable questions, not politically based. This is a matter of national security and it can't be repeated. And I'm not aware of any precedent for it before, and.
Peter Darton indicated that he'd heard that agencies were concerned that Alban Easy might leak the information that perhaps the Prime Minister couldn't be trusted.
The New South Wales police have either made a deliberate decision not to advise the Commonwealth so that the Prime Minister wasn't advised because they were worried he was going to leak the information. Beyond that, there's no other reasonable explanation.
Now, this is important. This issue is critical to public safety. How can Alban Easy protect us from terror threats if he doesn't know about them yet? The Prime Minister today try to deflect by saying this was all the noise and politics.
I find it shocking that the Prime Minister of this country wasn't alerted to an explosive Bladen caravan targeting Jewish sites, a threat with the potential to be Australia's largest terror event. You must have been absolutely livid that you weren't notified.
Now you're making an incredible assumption there, Carl.
You know what is important here. What's important here is.
That we don't play politics with national security.
It's not playing politics. It's about protecting Australians. He's meant to be the leader and Albaneze he pretend that the focus should be the investigation itself. Well, there can be two things happening at the same time, the actual police investigation and a separate inquiry into why he wasn't told.
Would you support something like that or is there anything to see here?
So stop the investigations, stop doing the work to track down the perpetrators of these crimes, they engage in politics.
All right, that's a note.
All right, do you think that that is a sensible use of resources?
How stupid does he think people are? No one is suggesting the counter terrorism officers investigate why Albanese wasn't told. The suggestion is for a separate bureaucratic inquiry and it wouldn't take long. But you could see the Prime Minister was getting agitated the more questions were asked in that interview. He didn't like that line of questioning. Now, the call for an inquiry first arose here last night when I
put it to Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Patterson. If it would have been executed a terror attack that would have had a forty meter blast wave and yet the Prime Minister didn't know about it. There almost should be an inquiry into what has gone on here because this is a major failure of national security. It's a major failure to protect Australian citizens.
Do you think there should be an inquiry?
I strongly support an independent inquiry by an eminent national security expert to get to the bottom of why the Prime Mister didn't know, or when he did know, and what he did about it.
And then this afternoon we saw the Australian Federal Police cover up on Albanese's behalf and repeat the same spin that it's an operational matter when they were asked when he was told.
Now, the idea that it's.
An operational matter is of course utter non since or Chris Mins wouldn't have been told, he wouldn't have felt comfortable saying the date that he was briefed, he had no problems saying that. But the reality is that alban Easy, the Prime Minister, doesn't seem interested in national security at all.
If he was, he would have been.
Having regular National Security Committee of Cabinet meetings on the anti Semitism crisis. He would have been getting daily briefings from the heads of AFP and ASIO on this issue that hasn't been happening.
Alban Easy just isn't interested. He doesn't think it's a big deal.
And if Dunnan's information is right, well, it would be highly concerning that the Prime Minister's own agencies don't trust him enough to divulge top secret intelligence. Now, over the past twenty four hours, we've seen the media, politicians and commentators in meltdown over Donald Trump's idea to take over Gaza, and it's been fun to watch have a look at some of it.
When when one thought of the sort of catastrophic iterations of Trump two point zero, this is the kind of stuff that people imagined.
Donald Trump is articulating America's foreign policy here in real time in ways that I don't know to what extent they can they be checked.
The coon that he uses is it's a demolition site. That's a real estate development term. It's a it's it's it's the riviera of the Middle East that world people will live there. It's going to create thousands of jobs. You're right, he's speaking about it as a real estate developer.
The agency here, right, is the agency of the Palestinean people are they going to be frog marched out of their country by US forces as it's then rebuilt as a as a riviera by presumably US property developers.
Frog marched The critics are feeding off misconceptions. They are claiming nick cleansing when Trump is speaking about a humanitarian rebuild is ready. Prime Minister Benjaminette and Yahoo clarified some of the points on this today, saying this wouldn't be America getting involved in foreign fighting, a point I made last night.
He also said America wouldn't be paying for it.
Have a look, Yeah, well, I don't think he talked about sending you as troops to complete the job of destroying Khamas. That's our commitment. That's our job, and we're absolutely committed to it. And I also don't think he said that he's going to fund it. He said that neighboring states, wealthy states would do it. But the actual idea of allowing for his Ghuzins who wanted to leave
to leave, I mean, what's wrong with that? They can leave, they can then come back, they can relocate and come back, but you have to rebuild.
Ghaziv and Nata.
Yahoo also said that he'll work through Trump's proposal, but overall he endorsed it as a good idea.
This is the first good idea that I've heard. It's a remarkable idea, and I think it should be a really pursued, examined, pursued and done because I think it will create a different future for everyone.
And that end line, there'll create a different future for everyone, and there does need to be a different future for everyone. Why should Israelis have to live next to terrorists who have vowed to commit October seven over and over again. Why should any family, Jewish or Arab Muslim have to live next to the terror threat? Because this isn't just about Jews. Muslim and Thai hostages were taken on October seven and were slaughtered as well in the devastating massacre
that took place on that dark day. In reality, this isn't about building a Trump Tower on the Gaza Strip, although that would be an improvement from underground Hamas tunnels. This is about encouraging the Arab nations to step up and be part of rebuilding Gaza free from Hamas. It's a brighter vision than anyone else has dreamt up for the Gaza strips so far.
Today was one of the great days that we should We will look back in decades to come and go what this was one of the most amazing days in history.
I was thrilled.
Unlike the other people you spoke to, whoever they were, Andrew I was absolutely swinging from the chandelier and cracking the bubbly.
And saying, this is just an amazing day.
Coastal resorts and condominiums have been away to wealth and good jobs for lots of third world countries. If Gaza had a leadership that was concerned with the welfare of its own people, it would be trying to do this itself in cooperation with Israel, instead of waging these insane Islamist wars all the time against Israel, and.
Instead of taking the billions of dollars in international aids it has been given over the years and spending it on terroraced infrastructure like tunnels and weapons now. Peter Dutton today also praised Trump's vision.
He's a big thinker and a deal maker. He's not become the President of the United States for a second time by being anything other than shrewd. People who dismissed President Trump and say that he's not serious or whatever derogatory comments they want to make. I just think it defies the reality of the gravitac that he brings to the situation.
Director of Strategic Analysis Australia, Peter Jennings writes in The Australian Today that Trump should be admired for wanting to break the cycle of history. And he writes, and I'm quoting here, the idea of turning the Strip into the riviera of the Middle East is an ethmtter everything the terror group stands for, including the idea that Garzans might be released from the living hell of harmask control by being allowed to pick up their lives in a different location.
But perhaps that's what's behind all of this criticism and concern. Trump has a vision that just could work with the involvement of the Arab nations. But perhaps the international community, like the United Nations, doesn't want to lift Palestinians out of the endless cycle of poverty, victimhood and misery. And for more on that, Peter Jennings himself joins me, Now, thank you very much for your time. Well, let's pick
up on that last point. Why do you think that Hamas and the international community perhaps doesn't want Gaza to be modernized, perhaps wants to keep Palestinians suffering.
I think it's used as a way of attacking Israel, frankly, and it keeps alive and ideology which is never going to work. From the river to the sea mentality show that the Palestinian homeland is only going to be created when Israel has wiped off the face of the map and all the Jews are killed, and that's simply not
going to happen. And the price that Palestinians pay for that ideology is that they and their children and their grandchildren are sort of locked permanently into this concept of being a refugee, never moving anywhere, only able to be pawns in a game which is being played by the United Nations, hamas, terrorist groups, ran and the sort of ideological left in the democracies, which has more fun doing that to attack Israel than they really are concerned about the lives of Palestinians.
Yeah, because we've seen they don't express the same concern over the lives of people who are killed in other parts of the world. There's silence, there's not protests on the streets. We've seen that over and over again, Peter, I want to ask you about what would motivate maybe Saudi Arabia or the Sunni Arab world to come on board here with Trump's vision, And is this partly because the greater enemy now is Iran.
So something that wasn't noticed too much Shari and reporting Trump's comments about Gaza was that only the day before he signed a presidential directive into law saying that America was not going to accept Iran getting nuclear weapons. And there's a lot more detail to that, but really the effect of that direction is to significantly constrain Iran's ambitions as the prime funder, for example, of terrorism and anti
Israel behavior in the Middle East. Now, I think that you've got to see that directive and Trump's comments on Gaza together. The thing that might motivate Saudi Jordan, Egypt, Syria, a number of other Middle Eastern countries to at least entertain a new discussion about what to do about the Palestinians is if they can feel confident that Irana is not going to become a nuclear power and dominate the region.
So it's the combination of those two things which I think is the really interesting factor here, And While everyone's criticizing Trump in all sorts of hystorical ways. Really what he's done is has just opened up a new conversation we can now work out. Well, maybe there's a way forward that's better than just rinse and repeat, you know, continuing the same cycle which has only led to violence five attacks against Israel in twenty years. That cycle has
to be broken. So I think we should be welcoming, you know, highly unusual, but as always, that's what you get with Trump. At least it's a new way of trying to discuss a problem.
At least it's wanting to end the status quo, because you know, from the Alban Easy government, all we was ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire. I mean if Nadanya, who had listened to that, and of course he never would have, the Hamas leader would still be alive, the Hesbala leader would still be alive. Israel would be in a much weakened state. Peter, I want to pick up on something else you wrote in your piece, which I thought was really fascinating and exposes
actually the danger underneath this idea. You write how Palestinians are burdened by an ideology that and This is driven by people outside who will never live in Gaza, that their children and grandchildren will forever be refugees, and that displacing Jews in Israel is the only solution to their plight river to the sea. So this is actually a one state solution, really, isn't it.
Yes, so one state solution, and it's going to be the Hamas state. That's the ideology again. Another reason why I think the Albanesi government's position is intellectually bankrupt on the Gaza issue is that there is no Palestinian authority entity which is actually interested in negotiating a two state
solution with Israel right now. There have been a number of occasions when Israel would have been more than prepared to have that discussion, including by the way, when they handed Gaza over to the Palestinians some twenty years ago,
and that simply hasn't happened. And one has to ask, you know, why is it that, uniquely in the world, the Palestinians must be condemned to always be refugees when you know, the whole post war experience, including most obviously with Jews Shari, was that refugees moved to New Homeland and settled there. So you know, I'm not saying that means to say that Gaza and the West Bank Khana in some way become part of a new Palestinian homeland.
But maybe that's not enough. Maybe we need to think about other options that add land to that from Middle Eastern countries. That's partly what President Trump was talking about. And we break this idea that generations of people are condemned to be called refugees because the UN and other agencies insists that that's what they should be.
Yeah, more further evidence why the United Nations is broken. Peter Jennings, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks.
Okay, let's bring in our national Senator Matt Canavan and Sky New senior reporter Caroline Marcus.
Welcome to you both.
Look, I want to turn to this quite big news today that Google has abandoned its diversity hiring quotas and requirements, as of course, follows President Trump's move to defund DEI programs. Now Back in twenty twenty, Google wanted to increase the number of diversity hires by thirty percent. They called it an aspirational hiring goal. Well, that goal is now over.
In an email to all staff the Google chief executive, so that they're now committed to hiring the best people wherever we operate, create an environment where everyone can thrive and be treated fairly.
Matt Canavan.
I mean, this shouldn't be revolutionary, but it is, isn't it.
Yeah, Look, it's amazing, isn't it, Shari, that something as simple as effectively a paraphrasing of Martin Luther King's junior's
famous words is sort of revolutionary and radical. You know, I thought we got there and we all did believe that people should be judged by their character, not the color of their skin, or the vast majority of people did, and then we've gone through this weird period which culminated in the Black Lives Matter movement and kneeling before everybody where it became again almost like pre Civil War days, that you were judged by your bloodline, effectively how much
of particular content you had in your ancestry and history. So look, hopefully we can consign this period to the dust bin of history. Unfortunately, I think the dregs of it are still with us here in this country. We still have something called the Gender Equality Agency, which requires almost every business in this country to fill out forms and forms and forms, and we just got to get
rid of all this form filling in our country. Focus on what matters again, focus on doing a good job as business people or whatever we do in our lives. And yeah, get back to judging people on merit. Merit should be the yardstick.
Absolutely, and it is DEI is alive and well in Camber and all of the Canberra departments, Caroline.
But it's not just Google.
Amazon as well dump their diversity targets back in December. So it does seem to be a movement hasn't quite hit Australia yet.
I agree with Matt.
No, it will take a while to trickle down. And while we have a labor government in charge, I dare say it's probably not going to happen because they've fully signed up.
To this sort of stuff.
But I do see this as the beginning of the end of woke. And the fact is that if the tech giants who were so against Trump for so long during his first presidency, during the Biden administration, you know, censoring stories about Biden's sons laptop, and they were fully on board with that kind of stuff. If that even they have come to the Party in support of Trump. You know, big things are changing, but we've seen, look, we've seen this crazy diversity inclusion stuff takeover almost every
sector of life, from even our public broadcaster. We heard in court today during Antoinette Latouf's case that she was hired as part of the ABC's diversity policy because she was identified as a future presenter due to her Lebanese Christian heritage.
And look at the headaches.
That hire has caused the ABC to hire a pro Palestinian activist just because.
She would be a good diversity.
High Absolutely, and it's problematic in some fields. I mean we saw with the Los Angeles fires recently, the diversity picks.
I mean, you know, there are some.
Occupations and look, maybe are a very strong women, and there are very strong women out there, no question I'm not one of them. But you know there are some jobs that you know, some people would just be better suited to it, and you can't force others into those occupants.
When I worked for Sunday newspaper, Shoy Quickly, i am the editor, mc carroll asked me to try out for a firefighter job and I failed in every physical category. So even that firefighter you talked about that firefighting chief talking about the fact that if someone challenged her on not being able to carry them out of a house, you would say, well, you were in the wrong place. I mean, that's that's the level of.
Our the excellence that we're striving to war Jockey all right, Well, the Minerals Council and the energy industry are both stepping up a campaign over Chris Bowen's eighty two percent renewable target by.
Twenty thirty now.
Matt the Minerals Council has described it as this target as a pet project for Chris bowl.
And he's not going to meet it anyway.
Is unrealistic, isn't it?
It is?
And look if it was just simply a number and a dream and a vision, and perhaps wouldn't do so much damage. But what this actually does is drive the investments that you're all asked to pay for in our energy system. When the energy plans sit down to work out how much they're going to spend on transmission lines and where they're going to build them, what farms are going to go through, they target this eighty two percent figure.
It's like a mythical figure. We're not actually going to get that much wind and solar in the next three years to hit it. But they're going to build these power lines effectively to nowhere in the misguided view that we might hit it. Now. These power lines cost billions upon billions of dollars, and when we build them, you will have to pay a higher can you believe it, even higher electricity bill than you currently do, just to
meet this mythical target. As I say, these mission lines almost be certainly going nowhere, not actually carrying any power is absolutely absurd. The government needs to just change this. I need to sack Chris Bowen and start again if they want any hope to convince the strains that they have a serious plan about energy.
I used to think he was the most unpopular of all the Albanzi government ministers, but now it would be hard to pick between him and Penny Wog and Albanesi and Tony Burke.
I mean, yeah, there's too many in there.
But seriously, Caroline, you know ministers have not been able to answer genuine questions that are in the public interest around the cost of this target.
And how can we trust anything they say When they went to the last election promising a two hundred and fifty dollars two hundred and seventy five dollars reduction and power bills based on the energy policies that they were taking to the election. That certainly hasn't happened. Our energy bills have only gone up. They've been unwilling to even engage in a genuine debate about nuclear, which, once the infrastructure is there, would be cheap, it would be clean.
It has been embraced by.
So many other countries as the future for secure energy, and instead they've engaged in these juvenile tactics to suggest that it's going to lead to three eyed fish and three headed koalas, like no one's saying that exactly.
So they've got their head in their sand about this.
They don't want to listen to anyone who might have some genuine, legitimate criticism.
For them, and I think it will.
It will ultimately will cost all of us in the end, but it will cost them too.
As we were sitting here last night, Tony Burke introduced new legislation on mandatory minimum sentences for terror offenses and also hate speech and anti Semitic offenses. Matt Canavan this was originally Peter Dutton's idea and James Patterson's idea. The government spent two weeks opposing it and then they suddenly introduced legislation. The Coalition has supported it and it got through today. You don't always agree with your party, what's your view on this?
Sometimes I don't, that's true sharing. Look, Look, it was a bit of a disappointing day again the Senate that we rushed such important legislation through. It got about an hour, just over an hour of debate. And you know, I support the managery minimum sentences, but it's a pretty serious issue and we maybe should have a debate more broadly about what other parts of the criminal coach should have managery minimum sentencing. But yeah, it was guillotine through a
gag through, rushed through. I did disagree with my party about that. But look, ultimately support these strength and laws and look, hopefully work in effect. I did also have an issue. I tried to move it amendment to say, look, anything inside citing to violence should only be a crimeer
in sites physical harm or force or violence. I am concerned in the future that courts may reinterpret this to me feelings effectively psychological harm, because a lot of people out there do argue that speech is violence, and I wouldn't want to have always going down that path.
No, absolutely, no one would.
But I think if it's clear cut as a death threat, well, if there's a death threat, then you know, no one should. That's not free speech, that's hate speech. It's pretty simple, Caroline. You covered a fascinating case in Cot today where well why don't you tell us about that?
Well, this is.
A case of Yasmin Mansor. She is a twenty two year old woman who, shortly after October seven, and.
It's taken this long to work its way.
Through the courts, had sent a message to a Jewish school, which we've chosen lot to identify, and I mean the very disturbing messages, which include saying that she wants the children, the Jewish school children to get cancer and die a slow, painful death, calling them the children of Satan, and ending her message with praise Hitler only he was here to continue the mass destruction of your bloodline.
I mean, it was a very long message. These are just some excerpts from it.
Now.
She was charged with using a carriage service to menace, harass or offender, and she actually pleaded not guilty to that despite admitting that she sent the message, she had a number of excuses. She was concerned about the Palestinian cause and about her what she interpreted as a genocide, even though this happened before the full scale ground evasion of Gaza. She also said she was told the Texas she.
Was just having a laugh with her friend.
Now, what I found ultimately disappointing was that the magistrate, Miranda Moody, she gave a Yasmin.
Mansill a real serve in court.
She spoke about how vulnerable the Jewish community is, that even a twenty one year old, which Miss Mansell was at the time of the offense, would know that you can't raise Hitler, that you can't say these things about children, and how deeply offensive it is. And to try and get off on some kind of legal technicality, which is what her lawyer was trying to do, just wasn't going to fly with her.
She gave it to her both barrels.
She wouldn't even hear ms Mansur speak about remorse she was feeling because having pled not guilty, clearly she's not very remorseful, the magistrate said. But ultimately she turned around and said, I won't record a conviction because of your youth and the fact you have no prior record.
And that's the problem, Karl.
Police go to the enormous effort and resources, and I've had police complain to me about this. I've spoken to them about this. The enormous resources, the poor police. They go and chart investigate, find the people, charge the people, and then the magistrates just let them off.
And this sounded like this magistrate was really disinclined to record no conviction. She said that she did it reluctantly. But the way that the court system is set up and the precedents that they have is that if someone doesn't have a criminal record, if they're young, these things work in their favor and they give them the benefit
of the doubt. Unfortunately, as we've seen with recent hate attacks and one of this kind of speech can culminate and you know, the victims, the properties that are being burned, the schools, the daycads that are being burned, these people don't get the benefit of the doubt and being protected from these kinds.
And know, we need tough policing, no question, not only you know, as a punishment, but as a deterrent as well. Matt Canavan, I'm sure you'd agree with that. Tough policing as a deterrent.
And look, I'm always I'm always a little reluctant to comment on individual cases that I haven't gone through in the detail that Carolyn Carolyn has, But i mean, the one thing that struck me there, if this individual hadn't pleaded not guilty, it's hard to know how she could be found to have some remorse. I mean, you know, look,
I don't know how. I don't even know how young she is, Sharry so, but it's shocking messages and that's why we do need a stricter in here to make sure this everyone knows is not acceptable in our country.
Indeed, all right, Matt Canavan, Carol and Marcus, thank you both so much.
Now still to come.
Dutton steps up pressure on alban Easy, demanding an inquiry. I'll discuss this with Sarah Henderson and ABC boss David Anderson admits it wasn't hard for him to find Antoinette Latouf's controversial social media history, So why was she hired in the first place. I'll talk about that after this quick break.
Welcome back.
Well, let's turn now to the court case between the ABC and pro Palestinian activist Antoinette Latouf.
Well.
Today, the ABC Managing director David Anderson told the court that he believed Latouf's social media feed contained content that added up to anti Semitism. He said that he came to look at miss latooth social media by way of just searching her.
Name later on the evening of Monday after.
Her first shift, and what I saw, oh, and that social media was misleading on the Israel Gaza conflict advocacy for one particular perspective, to which we'd say, obviously, And Jooning min Now is a data telegraphs journalist James Willis, James, why didn't the ABC do its due diligence If it did it were to be in this situation, Well.
That's right, Sherriot.
And I am no fan of Antoinete Latouf, and I think she's been very provocative for a long period of time. She's had to go at me on social media previously and said a number of provocative comments. She's had to go at other journalists as well, So I am no fan of her, but I think it is crazy that someone at the ABC didn't look at her social media history before appointing her to this really small shift. It was five basically five shifts on air on ABC Radio.
Someone didn't look at that, and it took for her to be hired and to be starting on day one. For David Anderson, who's on one million dollars a year and so often is left short and left sort of scrambling to figure out who is actually responsible for this terrible leadership at the ABC bom lying. But the fact that didn't happen and then they had to pull the pin on her appearances.
Halfway through is terrible.
But I also think I'm amazed the ABC is defending this case and didn't do everything possible to sort this out behind closed doors, for the simple reason that it's so embarrassing to have David Anderson in the.
Box for two days in a row.
These private emails with either buttros read out, and all these detail about how the sausage is made, which as we know, can be very ugly in cases. The whole thing is a mess, and it just strikes me is once again the ABC leadership being so far.
Off the mark.
Well, one of those very embarrassing admissions from David Anderson is that ABC journalists I mean, their top journalists like Patricia carve Ellis and Laura Tingle.
He's admitted that they can go against the.
Rules of impartiality, again something we do know, but that's embarrassing for him to have to admit that because the ABC's charter says the journalists have to be impartial totally.
But so often some of the senior journalists at the ABC you find themselves as protected species. I mean, you've had Laura Tingle at a public forum say that Australia is a racist nation. You've had other people using social media for all sorts of provocative statements and going outside that charter. They're always defended by the ABC, and so
there is certainly a double standard there. Look, for a long time, there's been a perception that the inmates run the asylum at Ultimo, and that is that the journalists have the most power and the management, and there are some.
Very weak leaders at the ABC that.
Don't actually acknowledge when they've made mistakes. And on this one, once again, why would you be going through the embarrassment of going through this dCas because they probably.
Don't want to have to pay her though, and you know the ABC aren't they weren't in the wrong. You know, it is in their charter journalists have to be objective and impartial. They realized they had a full on pro Palestinian activist as a host.
That should never have happened.
Yeah, I think so, And I think the fact that she was employed, and David Edison even admitted that he thought it was a weird decision. You've then got the managing director, the one million dollar managing director, going through her social media account and going, hey, I think we've got an Antoineppe problem here. I mean, that just doesn't
happen in the real world. So there should have been a number of checks before giving someone like this, even a short term contract, which was always going to end in tears.
And again I'm not standing up for her.
I think it'll just be an interesting case to determine where these things land. But it's been a really embarrassing day. And so often we hear these stories out of the ABC where the management is just not in control of what.
Is going on.
Yeah, and of course we don't have time for it now. But you covered the Heston Russell case very closely as I did.
There are similarities.
But you know the fact that this the hearings in this case in the Federal Court are lasting longer than her original contract. I mean, it's such a fuss and she was paid for the full five days. Why you know this is this is her wanning publicity absolutely totally. Yeah, all right, James Willis, thank you so much, love your wick. All right, let's return now to today's top story in Canbra, Peter Dutton's demand for an inquiry into when the Prime
Minister was briefed on the caravan terror threat. And joining me now is Shadow Education Minister Sarah Henderson. Sarah, great to see you. Look what answers does the coalition want from an inquiry?
We'll Shari terrific to join you.
And of course, as we've seen and Australians have seen, continuing weakness of leadership from Prime Minister alber Easy over the anti Semitism crisis in this country. In contrast to the very strong and decisive leadership from Peter Dutton and the Coalition, this Prime Minister has been ducking and weaving. We know the Premier mins was brief back on the twentieth of January. Why won't the Prime Minister say what he knew and when the Inquiry does need to get
the bottom of this. It's just not good enough. He's meant to be the leader of our country, Sharry, and so why is he ducking and weaving on an incident that could have been the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil in our history. This was a caravan laden with explosives and the target was a Jewish synagogue. So we also need to know what steps were taken to protect the Jewish community and frankly, are there any other threats that we don't know about?
Oh?
Exactly. It's a good point.
Duttan implied today that one of the reasons the Prime Minister may not have been briefed in on this is that their agencies were concerned he'd leak Sarah.
Is there any evidence behind this?
Is this something that the coalition is hearing from sources in the agencies?
Well?
I think this is a very serious concern and perhaps that explains why the Prime Minister has been ducking and weaving. We certainly know that many Australians do not trust Labor and this Prime Minister when it comes to national security and keeping our community safe, and we had to drag Labor kicking and screaming to support our proposal for minimum mandatory sentences for terrorism and of course for displaying Nazi
and terrorist organization symbols. That legislation went through the Parliament today, which is a very positive move for this country. But it took Labor two weeks to come to the table. It opposed these tougher laws, and again it's more indication that Labor and this Prime Minister cannot be trusted on national security, on keeping our community safe, and frankly, SHARRII, it's no wonder that I think law enforcement agencies are also looking like they don't trust this Prime minister as well.
Sarah, today in the Senate you were very frustrated because the Greens blocked one of your moves. You wanted to pass a bill that would have set up a commission of inquiry into anti Semitism at universities.
How frustrating is this?
I look just shocking. I would have thought that Labor would have had a change of heart after the fire bombing of a synagogue and a childcare center, after the anti Semitic attacks on schools and homes, and of course after the discovery of the caravan laden with explosives. But no Shari in the Senate this morning, Labor combined with the Greens to block our bid to set up a Commission of Inquiry on anti Semitism at Australian universities. We know that this is a very serious problem. There have
been many serious incidents. Again, we saw it ria its ugly head at the Queensland University of Technology just two weeks ago. This is appalling. Labour won't even listen to its own anti Semitism envoy Gillian Segal. It will not listen to every major Jewish organization which wants a full blown commission of inquiry to investigate these incidents and to curtail what is happening on our universities. It's just not good enough and it just shows continuing weakness of leadership by Labor.
Yeah, indeed, all right, Sarah Henderson, keep on pushing for the inquiry.
We desperately need one.
We need to remove the rot in university so it's safe for everyone to go. They really appreciate your time now coming up, Sam Kurz Golden Girl image in disarray. Sophie Ellsworth will join me. After another big day in the UK courts and the punishing fires in Victoria and Tasmania.
Will does Australia need.
To learn the lessons from La we'll talk about that after this quick break.
Welcome back.
Well.
This week, one thousand firefighters have been battling out of control flames in Victoria's Grampians region. There were two separate bush fires before they linked together on Tuesday and nineteen fires are currently burning across Tasmania and hikers have been forced to evacuate the iconic Overland Track. This is a reminder of the ever present threat that bushfires pose here in Australia, and after the devastation in Los Angeles, we need to make sure we're prepared. With joining me now
is bushfire safety expert Tim Wainwright. Tim, thank you very much for your time. Look, given we do live in a country that is prone to bushfires, what lessons do we need to learn from Los Angeles.
We need to allow residents to clear fire hazards from around their homes. We need to have a better system of fire permits. At the moment, residents are finding it very difficult to get fire permits. Myself included to do backburning correct its actually has a reduction burning. Back burning is the tactical burning of a fireback into a bushfier correctain it has a reduction burning is where you do controlled fires in safer weather conditions to reduce fuels from
around homes. That means there's less heat affecting the home, less fuel less fire essentially.
And the authorities are blocking people from getting permits.
To the actively blocking people from getting permits. I've applied many times for fire permits. Sometimes you get them, sometimes you don't. They make up ridiculous rules and they apply policies to override legislation which shouldn't have one in democracy.
This seems like an accident waiting to happen.
Sydney is a disaster waiting to happen what happened in Los Angeles. We don't get those types of winds. We do get severe conditions. We were lucky in twenty nineteen twenty twenty that the fires didn't get into Sydney proper. Had they gotten in places like Lindersfield or places around Sydney. But any bushland neighborhood you want to pick absolutely tinderbox waiting to go up. There's hazards that haven't been cleared. People aren't all had to clear them. The authorities tell
them take the hazards to the tip. You know, how are you supposed to clear one or two tas a bush land in a trailer, especially if you can't afford to do it, It's impractical. People need to be able to do pole burns as required to clear fire has its from firebreaks. There needs to be more has reduction burning in the bush. The authorities are failing to do this as well. And it's not the Greens. People blame the Greens. It's internal policies of the fire services, both
Rural Fire Service and Fire and Rescuing Yourself Wales. They're letting down the public and we're waiting for a disaster to happen.
It's terrifying situation.
Aside from hazen reduction, what else can if people are living in a potential bush fire zone or near natural forests and bush what can they do to protect their homes?
Something called firewise practices like keeping leaves out of your gutters, cutting your tree limbs back, trying to keep your gardens green and short grass watered lush as possible so when burning embers drop on your property they don't start firing. Keeping any gaps around the house are covered up so
that burning members can't get in. The problem is, if you're backing onto national park that hasn't been burnt in ten or twenty or thirty years, you've got a bomb next to your house waiting to go off, and a ten meter clearing behind the fence isn't going to be enough to save your house even if you're there were a fire hose.
No.
Of course, you've trained other fire brigades internationally, and I thought it was fascinating to learn that actually you had trained in Israel and some of what you taught was then used by communities in October.
Seven, that's correct.
Since twenty nineteen, I've been going to Israel approximately one month a year to train emergency response teams of the communities. I've conducted some lectures to the fire rescue service. They're just starting the bushfire section essentially, and they're still starting to learn community bushfire safety.
Yeah.
So I trained farmers as well, our farm workers in firefighting. Because of that training, they were able to use those skills to save life and property during the attacks that happened on.
Seventh of Amazing Because of course, fires were lit the right tim wayne right great to have you on the show really appreciated all right? Sam Kerr claiming she was treated differently by British police. Sophie Ellsworth will join me in a moment. Welcome back. Well, let's bring in now news cops Europe correspondence Sophie Elsworth, Sophie, great to see you now. It was another big day in UK caught today in the Sam Kerr trial.
It's already been explosive, tell us what happened. So she took to the standard.
She was grilledful pretty much the entire day on Wednesday, and we heard from her the version of events that happened on that night January thirty back in twenty twenty three, where she said she's very embarrassed looking back at how she was on that night.
She admitted that she was drunk.
She admitted that she was very scared during this taxi ride with the taxi driver and that her partner, Christy Muse, used a booth of her shoe to smash through the back window on the taxi as they did for their life. So we heard quite damning testimony from Sam Kerr. She did say that she was treated differently by British police because of her race, and she had sighted that she'd experienced racism throughout her life, including when she was growing up in her.
Now, sophn you try to talk to her afterwards, but she didn't seem too happy to speak with you.
Have a look.
Oh sorry, we don't have that or play that another time, Sophie. What happened when you did approach her?
Well, each day she's been coming in and out of the court behind me. The media have tried to speak to her. She has said nothing. The whole way through. She's not made a single comment. She's rushed into court, she gets dropped right out here at the front and runs in. Now she's she's very you know, rushing in because she does not want to talk to any of the waiting media.
Yeah, we do have that clip now, so let's have a look.
Miss care anything to say about today, Miss Kare anything any comments?
Excuse man? Yeah, look, it would be very humiliating for her.
The entire world's media focusing on this, everyone seeing the video of her calling a police officer white and stupid. Do you think in a way it's a surprise that it's got to a cold case?
Absolutely, Shari. I mean, this is very damaging for her. There's all this footage coming out. There's you know, she was explaining she went out for a date with her partner at seven pm at night, she got in this cabin to she was vomiting out the door. She did reveal that she drunk too much. She says she's embarrassed by what happened. This is there's a lot of commentary coming out now. I've seen in the Australian media particularly, you know, concerns over what's next for her after this
court case. It is day four today, she's due to take the.
Stand again, as is her partner.
So let's see what happened.
Yeah, I'm sure it'll be another day of revelations. Sophiel's Earth great coverage. Is always great to have you on, and thanks everyone for watching this week. I've loved your company. That's all we've got time for. I'll see you Monday at eight o'clock and stay tuned because Paul Maray is up next and I'm sure he's going to have a cracker of a show.