Long shower.
Good evening while Alice Springs will again be subject to a curfew after an outbreak of shocking violence on the weekend. First a police officer was run over outside a bottle shop, and then last night, four off duty coppers, including three women, were allegedly set upon and robbed by a group of
twenty young men in the morning. The officers were crossing the Todd River to go back to their hotel in the early hours of the morning when the men allegedly approached them from behind and assaulted them, including punching one of the women officers in the face and kicking her multiple times. Northern Territory Police Commissioner Michael Murphy invoked recently introduced rules for a snap seventy two hour curfew between
ten pm and six am. The only people allowed to move within the restricted zone will be those fleeing domestic violence, visiting family, caring for someone, visiting a fast food restaurant of all places, or go to work. The commissioner says if things don't calm down, he'll extend the.
Curfew if there's a continuation of harmful conduct, which I hope there is not. If we apply some measures now to in addict and use the community to help us. We should say a turnaround. But if that continues and there's some behaviors that still concern me, we can apply for a I can apply for a seventy two hour a different area, or go to the minister for another seven days.
And the Alice might be back in the headlines today for all the wrong reasons. But the reality is that this has been bubbling away for ages for years and not much has been.
Done about it.
When violence and danger in Alice Springs reached ahead last year, Sky News, i have to say, was one of the only media outlets to give it the coverage and exposure it deserved. And these stories have been playing out every day since then, but we don't hear a great deal about them until something really goes wrong, like these cops
allegedly being bashed. Now, for a government that was so publicly concerned about indigenous affairs that it proposed the Voice to Parliament, the Albanese regime has remained strangely quiet about
all of this. Now, don't forget that last year the Prime Minister flew into Alice Springs for all of four hours as crime was worsening and then took off to Melbourne to sink beers and eat ice cream at the Australian Open Albaneze did visit Alice Springs a few months ago, and he did meet with local activist Darren Clark, who was on with Andrew Bold before and who has been vocal about the lack of inaction by authorities to stop
the crime and dysfunction. But what's changed natural, I mean, given the PM is so worried about Indigenous issues, surely he should have taken one look at Alice Springs and flown out of there determined to clean the joint up, come hell or high water for the safety of not only all residents, but particularly Indigenous children who find themselves in the grips of youth crime due to neglect and dysfunctional family love. As sorry, Senator justinto Nampagin for price correctly noted today.
A curfew is one thing, but you.
Have to actually do something about the causes of this violence.
Well, I'm sure the town will welcome another curfew. There are underlying issues taking place that we all know about the lives of these children need to be looked at much closer. And I've said this for years that Indigenous children in my certainly around in my community and throughout the Northern Territory, experience the highest rates of domestic and family violence, child sexual abuse. And it's no wonder that
we have circumstances. These children come from utter dysfunction where we're seeing again another rise in violent crime in the community.
It's all good and well to keep slapping a band aid on the wound, and that's essentially what this curfew is. But you change nothing without taking serious action, and the Albanzi government has been lacking when it comes to serious action. The Independent Yeparinia School in Alice Springs wanted to build a satellite campus at Burt Creek, which is sixty kilometers north of Alice, so kids in remote communities could go
to school without having to travel into town. It was hoping for about a million dollars from a forty million dollar fund the federal government had put up for these sorts of projects. Instead had got three hundred and twenty nine thousand. Meanwhile, Albanzi spent four hundred and fifty million dollars on a voice to Parliament referendum that failed and did nothing for Indigenous people.
I mean, imagine what could have been.
Done to improve the lives of kids in Alice Springs and elsewhere with that money, but instead it was blown on a political vanity project.
Indigenous affairs policy has gone on like this for decades.
It's why we talk about Australia Day and treaties and all this stuff instead of employment and domestic violence rates in Aboriginal communities. The former is easy and touch you fairly, and it makes you feel nice we're doing the right thing. The latter, of course, is uncomfortable, and it raises hard questions and potentially hard truths at Acknowledging any of that means actually doing some work, which is of course the hard bit. But that's the stuff that really affects people's lives.
A curfew might quell violence for a few nights, but it won't stop it. Soon enough, it'll be back to the way it was, and the people of Alice Springs, especially poor Indigenous kids, will be stuck on the same hamster wheel as they have been for years.
But will anyone care. Probably not now.
Anyone who knows anything about off roading or who's spent any time in the bush will know the popularity of the seventy series Land cruiser. It took pretty much the same since the nineteen eighth these apart from a few facelifts, and it's certainly not the fastest car in the world, but it is practical and reliable. It's been a somewhat ubiquitous part of country Australian life for decades.
I love a sunburnt country, a lamb of sweeping planes, of dragon.
Mountain regions, drugs and flooding raiders.
I love her father raisins.
I love her jewel seed, her beauty.
And her terror.
Wired brown land For me, Lamb cruisers.
How Good's laws. He is voiced by the way, but farmers love them.
And the troop carrier model has been something of a cult following in the camping and off road community. There's a seventy series owners group on Facebook with one hundred and nine thousand members. But Toyota announced today that it was killing its V eight turbo diesel engine, which makes up the vast majority of sales. Because, of course, someone wanting that sort of car is looking for something with grunt and power. They're not after speed or efficiency, They're after a car that.
Can do hard tasks.
Toyota's decided to go soft in the name of the environment. You know, there was a time when Toyota bragged about being tough.
Is right, Toyota tough no more.
Some ninety percent of the seventy series sales are V eights, according to Toyota itself. Toyota's Australian sales boss Sean Hanley said, quote clearly there is still a preference for V eights. We can't hid from that. That's the reality. So why are they dumping such a wildly popular product. Well, quote unquote community expectations apparently, mister Hanley said, environment is on people's minds. We believe the community expects that we will
reduce our CO two footprint. He said, there's currently a two year waiting list for these vates. Some of those orders may now not be met thanks to the decision to discontinue the engine. Shouldn't really be up to the manufacturer, or the government or anyone else to decide if or how our carbon dioxide.
Footprint is reduced.
The fact that ninety percent of sales of this vehicle were vates, I think kind approves that customers want vates. What Toyota is saying is that green activists are demanding that we reduce the overall emissions of our fleet, and the easiest way to do that is to get rid of what is an inefficient engine from a fuel perspective, even though that engine is strong and built for a
particular purpose for which it is renowned. Now they claim that this decision was made years ago and has nothing to do with the Albanezi government's new vehicle emission standards which will be introduced next year, and they essentially mean that car manufacturers will be fined if the emissions caused by their overall fleet go above a certain limit, which means you can still sell fuel guzzling cars, but that then has to be offset by cars with much lower emissions,
like electric cars, to bring the average down. And Toyota has made it very clear that it doesn't think fully electric cars are the way forward and they'll only ever make up about thirty percent of the market.
So if they're not willing.
To go down the electric road, then they need to do something, and the V eight would seem to be the most obvious victim. Now, this is just a sign of things to come. When those emission standards come in, car manufacturers will have to make plenty more decisions like this unless they want to pay extra, and of course that cost would have to be passed on to you.
Some scoffed when emission standards were described as the end of the ute and the end of the off roader, but it seems pretty clear that that's the way we're going, regardless of how popular these cars might be. They can't get you to change your behavior, so they're going to force you to change your behavior.
Also coming up on the show.
To Night calls for cashless welfare to be brought back, as a new report shows an increase in spending on gambling and grog after the Albanesi government can a debit card trial. Plus Paris turns into a battleground as the far left celebrates its election win by attacking police, and Woolworths has decided it's suddenly okay to sell Australian flags for an upcoming event. Will tell you about that story shortly. Well.
It was a bit more bad news for the Albanesi government today, with the latest newspole figures showing that the coalition is ahead of Labor for the first time in the key battleground state of New South Wales, is increasing the lead they hold in Queensland, and it comes as Labor lost a significant amount of younger voters. The primary vote of the eighteen to thirty four year old demographic
fell to thirty percent. Let's bring in tonight's panel. Joining me as always on a Monday Night with Sharry is my late debate co host Liz Storer and Skyne New's contributor Joe hildeband who will also be me on the lake.
That's right, we are like.
We are slowly do you just need to grow the bed out a little more.
And we'll be there now.
It's interesting The Australians published a story tonight saying that young labor is sort of revolting against the party because of the decision they made in terms of fatima payment. It's interesting to see the reduction in the youth support for Labor. Are they going off to the Greens?
Yeah, that's always been a threat, and that's always I mean, young people are always I mean it's a cliche, isn't it. If you're not a socialist when you're eighteen, you have no heart. If you're still a socialist when you're fifty, you have no head.
And I'm heartless.
That's been a true to everyone from Winston Churchill down. So I don't think that's necessarily a problem that Labor is losing youth votes, because they're always going to go a more radical way, especially if they're on the left already, They're usually going to gravitate towards the most radically left and then hopefully come back after they grow a brain.
What I'm much more concerned about is Labor losing votes in the middle in the middle demographic, my middle aged, middle class people, basically the heart and soul of mainstream Australia, and that's a big problem. The interesting thing about this post, so what the odds and newspole do every few months is they aggregate all the news polls over the past three months, get a bigger number so that it's actually statistically representative, and then they can break it down on
state by state basis. You can't do that, basically, the sample size isn't big enough for a normal news poll cycle to give state by state breakdowns. So this is basically where Labor has been sitting over the last three months. The bad news is that it may have gotten worse since then because of Adam a pavement stuff, because of the high that expected inflation targets.
So it'll be very interesting. Again.
This is why I think Labor would be probably a bit crazy brave to go to an election before the Queensland state election and voters have had their chance to whack Stephen Miles, because again they've seen safe labor seats for already in by elections. They'll see more safe Labour seats at the state election. Do you really want to be sticking up your head above the parapet.
Yeah, And you have to say at this point is that the chances of this government being returned with a majority are cooked.
It ain't going to happen.
So we're now talking about the numbers and if we get that interest rate rise, as I suspect we will next month, or if not next month, the month after that in September.
Looking at these.
Numbers that are starting to come through, now you would be genuinely worried if you were Anthony Alberiz.
Indeed, and of course Charmer's budget was all happy, happy, the future is so bright. Didn't really factor in that things would be getting a lot worse.
We saw that face off.
Between him and the RBA at the time, whereas he was counting on inflation not getting worse, the rates not going up, and the RBA was like, ah, check'snotes, where are you getting this idea from Jarmas? So they were counting on that big time and I would say sold Australians a furfey off the back of that. But this polling, I do find it very hard to get excited ten months out to an election because we know that they
can change. So until we see a very steady trajectory, trajectory I should stay still continuing.
In this direction.
There's a lot of counting chickens already happening, and that's what polsters do, right, They dive into the minutia of the numbers.
And this is what this means.
But what it does mean is that we're very likely to see a cobbled together government with bedfellows that we would rather not see in power. So one wonders, is this really better than a majority labor government sharing power with Indeed, in order to keep power would make for a much worse correct.
Historic calls for majority of labor.
I love that moment.
Take it to the bank.
It's it's going to be the headlight on the sky News dot com, dot a u website. Go and check it out now now while we're on labor. Daniel Andrews, of course is all of our favorite former labor leader, and he's agreed to surrender his mobile phone records from the day of a near fatal collision he and his wife, his wife was driving at the time, had with a young cyclist in twenty thirteen. Ryan Muelman, of course is
his name. You've heard the story before. His lawyers have been going after the Andrews family because he was struck when he was fifteen by their suv in blair Gowy on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, and they've been trying to work out who mister Andrews may or may not have spoken to when the crash occurred, because there was a delay between the crash him calling Triple zero, and they're worried about he could have been influenced in the aftermath of the crash, but he had engaged Andrews.
That is top Silk. Sorry.
Philip Crutchfield KSE. They were going into court this morning. He charges up to twenty five thousand dollars a day and he was going along to help fight this request for phone records in court.
This morning, and at.
About five past eight, Joe, they decided we're not going to challenge it anymore, which a strange turn of events.
It is a very strange turn of events. I obviously am not particularly close to.
Dan Andrews really.
Certainly the people in labor that I like and support are no friends of Dan either, and he's certainly no friend of theirs. The only conclusion I can reach is
that he figured that. I mean, everything Dan Andrews does, he's very intelligent, he's very strategically minded, calculating whatever you want to call it, and he would have made the calculation of what would be in his best interest, and he's no doubt calculated that keeping the phone records suppressed would have been a worse look than allowing them to come out, even if they end up damaging him, because
he no longer has anything to lose. So obviously, this is something that happened eleven years ago now, and there's been all sorts of kind of nine years weird stuff, weird stuff about it, and so the question is whether or not so he would have said, right, well, it was worth the suppression or worth fighting it or whatever. It was just swearing that black is white as wont to do while he was still premier and there was
political skin to be lost. Now there's no longer premiere, then he's obviously made the decision that what, you know, how could it really hurt him unless there's some sort of you know, I think the reasoning is a.
Bit more black white than that, though, because they were originally after eleven year's worth of texts, they did a one eighty and said, okay, we just want your phone records the day of. I mean, right now, they don't even know if someone was potentially on the phone while driving and hit this young man, so that is when this backflip occurred. So I'm now curious to know what those other phone records would show because obviously the day
of he's not so worried. But if they wanted eleven years worth of telephone records pertaining to this young man that day that accident, that was going to put him in serious trouble.
So he was never going to give that up.
Hired this big silk to fight the subpoena all the way. And then when it was just like okay, the day of, I'll give you that much.
And like you got to ask the question, what would he be worrying about that was in those phone records.
Right, I'm not any politician about it would have to be. I mean they're not.
They can't do the subpoena and then go oh well, Daniel Andrews was talking to Cina Allen on this particular day about the Commonwealth Games and that was dodgy. It would have to pertain but specifically to this, and so you do just have to wonder why he was so determined to not reveal what was in it.
Now the NDAs where we know that there were.
Reforms planned and Bill Shorten was on Sky yesterday morning talking about the fact that he wants to remove sex work from the things that would be funded.
Using prostitutes.
Is that going to be in the rigs as bad?
We will rule it out, Yeah, it will all it out.
That's it's just not a sustainable proposition.
Okay a report in the news.
It doesn't pass the test, does it.
But advocates in the disability sector have spoken out. They say that a ban would mean the government deciding who could have sex.
The ABC quoted.
Disability Australia President Matt I should have read that before I came on in marraik Yonkers.
Anyway, it makes as much sense as what she said.
She said, while it's not for every NDAs participant, it has facilitated those supports for people to live an ordinary life, and sexual expression is part of an ordinary life as a human being.
Changing this law would mean you.
Are now actually having the government choose whether some people with disability are having sex. Joe, I just thought all that was saying was if you want to see a sex worker, you have to pray.
For it yourself.
Yes, I mean that's certainly what I have to do. So I don't see why.
Papers a curious look.
It is certainly true that, you know, for someone who has a disability and with all the issues that can bring. So you know, if you have a physical disability, often you do feel you know, I'm not attractive anymore. This is awful, no one's ever going to want me again. And you know, having having sex with someone can be a way of getting out confidence back, and it can be very therapeutic and supportive. So I dont actually disagree
with that. The question is where does that sit on the list of priorities for people with disabilities in a scheme that unless a huge amount of work is done very very quickly and comprehensively will be so completely unaffordable that basically no one will get anything. And so I think you have to prioritize, you have to focus on the basics. You know, you have to start with you know, and again, my best maid is quadriplegic. You know, start with making sure that he can actually get out of
bed each day. Yes, And start with making sure he can actually you know, have the ot he needs to be able to use a computer and get a job or whatever.
That sad, that's right.
And then if there's cash left over, we can talk about these, but there won't be any cash so much.
Then that very quickly before we go lists. After ditching Australia Day merchandise in January, Woolies has now decided that they're going to stock Australian flags for the Olympics. And not only have they said they're going to stock Australian flags for the Olympics in Paris, they're going to keep them.
There all the time. Now, what a backflip, what a turn around.
Of course, it's easy to do this now because it's not in celebration of our national day. So they can say no, this is patriotic in terms of we're supporting our guys at the Olympics, nothing controversial about that. But on our day of days, our National Day, the day in which we celebrate the birthday of modern Australia, those flogs fell over period. May they never be forgotten for that And now they say no, no, we'll keep them stocked next Australia Day and the Australia Day after that.
I can't wait to see them actually deliver on that because I don't know about you, but I have my doubts.
National pride is okay sometimes and not others. Listora Joe Hildebrand.
You can see them both again at ten pm on the Late Debate Don't miss it.
Still to come. Australia's military gets a major.
Boost for its arsenal, but is it enough? Plus silence from labor on indigenous issues as a snap down is declared for Alice Springs, Liberal Senator Karen Little joining mist Will communities are calling for a more targeted approach to the people impacted by the removal of the cashless debit card.
They believe it.
Should be brought back in some way, and this comes after a report into the cessation of the CDC by the Albanezi government in twenty twenty two, and this found that it resulted in a surge of gambling and alcohol related violence across the trial sites, which included Sir Juna in South Australia. Well, joining me now is Liberal Senator for South Australia Karen Little. Karen, it seems pretty clear that the cashless Welfare Card was at least in some
way doing the job it was meant to do. Its removal has meant to return to the social ills we saw before. Surely there is no argument to continue with its removal.
Well, this evaluation suggested spectacular fail when you take into account when the Greens, the Labor government and Senator David Pocock voted to end the cash list debit card enthusiastically, they said that it would empower communities, it would make
communities better. Well, that hasn't happened. The evidence has been clear for some time from the very people who actually live in those communities that this little experiment by the Albanezy Labor government has not worked, is actually caused untold turmoil in these communities and certainly hasn't improved the lives of anyone there well.
Of course, the argument that the government has made is that we should be able to trust people to make their own decisions. It's not right for the government to dictate how they do and don't spend their money. We have to give them a level of responsibility. I mean, look, in general, I certainly agree with the concept of personal responsibility, but what we have to acknowledge is that we the taxpayer, are giving these sums of money to people, and there
are often children and vulnerable people involved. It's an abrogation of the government's duty and responsibility to just hand that money over and expect that it's going to be used to feed kids when.
We know that's not what's happening.
Well, when you take into account this is money that is given to these people because they either are on pension, income support, pension or.
Some other form of income support.
You've got to take into account.
You know, we know from.
This evaluation that alcohol misuses up, violence is up, gambling is up, the wellbeing of children is down, and people who are in those communities down. The cost of this has been some two hundred million plus to abolish this card, and that doesn't even take into account the social the health costs of this, the medical costs, the business costs. It's been an extraordinary cost this experiment, in addition to funding people to be on welfare.
Well, the pleas of the Mayor of Siduna and others have been that, look, even if you're not going to bring back a full scale version of this card, and of course it was a trial to begin with, then at least bring back something that targets those people who struggle to budget their welfare money properly. I mean, and that's not a big ask, It's a pretty simple ask. Just please do something to help those who are the most vulnerable. How could the government say no to that?
Well, that's the whole thing, right, This card was about protecting the most vulnerable. It wasn't about taking people's rights away. The communities in which this card was trialed and actually asked for this card, it was the inner city elites, it was inner city electorates. It was the Greens and the Albanize government and some independents who actually said take
it away. You know, I was in the Junia earlier this year and I traveled there just after nearly every single business in that wrote to members of Parliament to say we can't deal with this anymore. This has gone way too far. Bring the card back. So this government hasn't been listening to people in those towns.
And of course many of the people who were part of the trial were Indigenous, and I mean it seems to be that the federal government was all going home about Indigenous issues of course, when it was trying to sell the voice to Parliament. You've got this, then you've got today a snap curfew that's been declared for Alice Springs for the next three nights because you've had what has been described as a horror string of incidents in the back town.
I mean, there's the.
Alleged assault of four off duty police officers by a group of twenty youths, and it goes on and on, and the Police Commissioner says he won't hesitate to extend the curfew further.
But we really have not heard.
A peep out of the federal government about Alice Springs, for instance, for the last year or so. You know, the PM went up there and had a quick visit and disappeared and then the issue you sort of fell off the radar. But there's still very much going through this trouble as well.
Well, Caleb, you know the Prime Minister did go up there, but he of course flew in on the day when takeaway alcohol was not allowed in Alice Springs, and he went on radio the next morning.
To say he didn't see very much.
Well, you know, he's got a security onto arch and he let everybody know he.
Was coming, and he was there on a Monday night.
Well that's when the whole town gets some respite and those fantastic frontline workers get some respite. What is the parallels between the cash the Stepit car and what's happening in Alice Springs is the two events that have happened in Alice Springs in very recent times. Territory Day where everybody can go out and spend money on fireworks, and then the weekend we've had the Alice Springs Show.
Well, do you know what this is? Actually some I reckon. I don't have to put money on it.
There's some pretty irresponsible decision making going on about where people's priorities are of spending their money. So we really have to look at those services that are getting so much money to deliver support to these people. What are they actually doing what are they preparing for when they know it's likely that these issues are going to arise. When you've got a great big bunch of people, and those people, not all of them, decide to spend their money and cause mayhem.
Karen, it'll thank you for your time, Thank you well.
Australia's defense force is set to be equipped with new deadly drones, in a major boost for its arsenal about time. The federal government has announced these small switchblade three hundred drones which are designed in the United States and it's made to crash into enemies and explode on impact. Joining me now is Strategic Analysis Australia's head of Research, Marcus Hellier. Marcus explain what exactly these things are and how significant this is to our weaponry.
H Good evening Taylor.
Well, it's a useful capability.
It's something that infantry soldiers can carry with them. It's portable, it's something they can set up quickly and it will allow them to target soft targets out to arrange about twenty kilometers, so if they are being attacked by a sniper or being attacked by an enemy team armed with mortars, they.
Could respond to that.
It's not a long range drone of the kind you're showing at the moment. It's man portable, it's small, and what I would say is it's the kind of thing that we should be taking for granted now as part.
Of the basic equipment of soldiers.
So just like they have rifles and they have bullets, they should have these kinds of drones. But the really amazing thing is it's taken us literally decades for the Australian Defense Department to acquire things like this.
And you know, I think the.
Big question is is why are we still so far behind the curve in the Australian Defense departments have taken us over a decade.
To catch up.
Well, that is precisely the question. And I mean we talk about drone capability. In the images that we were showing, there certainly some large, more long range, sophisticated drones. I mean, you know, other countries have been getting onto this technology and as you note, we've been really behind the eight ball for some time. So it's great that we're getting these things involved, but I'm not sure that it really puts us that much further forward.
No, it doesn't put us further forward. It's really just catching up with what's the industry's standard. I mean, Switchblade was originally developed by the Americans for the war in Afghanistan, and they put it into service in twenty twelve, so that's twelve years ago. Terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Kaeda have been making and using homemade equivalents to
this for over a decade. In Ukraine, we see the Ukrainian using thousands of drones literally every day, and this, as far as I can tell, is the first lethal drone that the Australian Defense sports has actually acquired. And so I'm just perplexed that's taken us this long, particularly when there are Australian companies SMEs here in Australia that can produce this technology and in fact have already been exporting this technology to other countries.
I ask this question of everyone I talk to about defense, so you're not going to be an exception. Why do you think it has taken us so long to do something like this? I mean, I mean our defense procurement over the past decade at the very least, and that covers both the Albanezi government and then the various iterations of the Coalition government have been absolutely abysmal. We are so far behind the eight ball. Why did no one wake up and do anything.
Well, it's not a question of money.
I mean, the Australian taxpayer is giving the Australian Defense Department fifty five billion dollars a year, so there is a lot of money there and I think we should be expecting better. There's a number of reasons. I think one is there's a deep distrust in the Australian Defense Department about Australian industry. I used to work in the Defense Department and I experienced it. So there is this view that if you want something good, you have to go to the Americans, and you have to go to
the big prime companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. But really that's a nonsense. I mean, the thing is, we can go and buy this system off the shelf from an American company, and we can stockpile hundreds or a few thousand of these things. But I'll tell you, on day two of the war, we've probably run out of them, and you're not going to be able to get them in a hurry on the global market when a big war starts. So if we want to be ready for
the next war. We need robust Australian companies, Australian industry that can produce these things and also up grade them because on day two of the war, the enemy will have worked out how to counter them, and we need to work out the next version that can overcome the adversaries countermeasures.
I mean, this is.
The what we're seeing every day in Ukraine, this rapid lightning evolution. And if we're just buying a product from off the shelf from overseas, we're not going to have the capability to adapt rapidly.
Yeah.
Look for a country that sits so close to China, it's quite frankly pathetic. I can't believe we're in this position. Marcus Hellier, thank you so much for your time. Well after the break concerns of a political uprising, as senior labor figures can see that key seats could be lost to Muslim independence and later chaos on the streets of Paris as the far left cellar breaks quote unquote their election don't go away well off, talks of a new
political movement ramp up. Two senior labor figures have conceded that two key seats could be lost to Muslim in dependents. According to an exclusive report by the Daily Telegraph, now there are concerns that this could replicate the latest British election, in which Labour's victory was dampened somewhat even though they won so many seats because its core Muslim voter base chose to back pro Palestinian candidates instead. Joining me now is former chief of staff to Bill Shorten and GXO
Strategies director Cameron Milner and former Labor MP Michael Danby. Michael, what do you make of the threat, particularly to Western Sydney, of Muslim voters getting together and backing in a Muslim candidate against people like Tony Burke for instance.
I'm sure they will. But if Labor maintains its nerves, if Dutton maintains his nerves, these French parties can be stared down. Starmer only won four hundred plus votes after two years of blood and guts struggle against the Prohamas Corby Night left in his own party, and the average brit then thought they were fit for office. So let's not think about the swings. But before thinking about the
roundabout the average Joss. He has got to think that the political party is electable and will not give into these wild eyed fanatics. That's more important than three seats in the western suburbs.
And of course it's not as though we haven't seen the propensity for the western suburbs of Sydney Cameron to vote for an independent before, I mean dire Lee.
Of course toppled.
Of course, so Scenic cannearly when she ran, and of course she was a ring in and there was a big campaign about But it's not like it's off the cards.
To get an independence out there.
Well not at all, Caleb, and I think the thing here is it's not about whether the Muslim candidate gets up because under compulsive proferential that may be difficult in the first past, but what it does to the labor primary. The Muslim vote could have the Labor primary in some of these Western Sydney seats. And if not for Tony Burke, who's going around as a low called surrender monkey to amms of Prince g Hard, who hate preaches his own
local Electric, he is pandering to the Muslim extremes. Is Electric desperate not to offend them because he's desperately worried that his primary, which is sixty percent or thereabouts could be halved and then suddenly he becomes incredibly vulnerable to Green's in thee Penans and others winning a seat like Watson.
Yeah, indeed, Cameron, So go on, Cameron. We can't.
We can't let some you know, concerns about those couple of seats jeopardized Labour's ability to win seats in Queensland, Regional, New South Wales, even Victoria and West Australia. If people think that we're surrendering to the wild eyed fanatics, the Corby Knites or the Erzdats Corby Knites, they won't vote for us. It's the main center of Australian politics, just
as in Britain, that we should be concerned about. And that's why Starma wore the what won the four hundred Okay he lost five in Corburn won his seat a big deal. They're not going to have any influence on the next government of Britain.
Yeah, you're right in that you can't give into it. I just hope some people in the Labor Party understand that let's move from Labor.
To the Greens. We've seen plenty.
Of outrage today and yesterday over Green Senator Marine Ferruki, who refused to say whether Hamas should be dismantled. Here she was on Insiders, Tamas need to be dismantled.
Well, listen, the situation with Hamasa is that it has nothing. I can't keep repeating it again and again. It has nothing to do with Palestinian statehood and Palestinian self.
The question was we have dismantled the.
Palestinians need to decide where they want to go with their own region.
It's just pathetic.
And in that same interview Cameron, she refused to say that the protests at Parliament House were a security breach. She said she was proud of Adam of Payman for voting against labor. I mean, you know, I just can't get over this stuff. If you asked a very simple question, should they be dismantled, why can't you just give a simple answer.
Well, And she also said the Australian War Mean Memorial was just another building, so it should be allowed to be refeited. I mean, she's a disgrace. She has completely lost to moral compass on her Mass. I mean her Mass is a terrorist organization that murdered and raped and took hostage women and Faruki stands up there and says she's an anti racist in her Wikipedia profile. Now she's completely lost a moral compass, and her master just proves how.
Extreme the Greens really are.
You'd have to wonder, Michael, whether or not Labor, if it has its brains together, goes into any preference deals with the Greens from this point on this right, because surely, in the same discussion that we were talking about before, this is not the time that you want to be sidling up to to someone like the Greens. And they have to take a stand and say no, we're not going to accept this equivocacy that we keep seeing from them.
Well, I don't think we should be swapping preferences.
I think you were right at the beginning of the program, Kaleb that they're probably going to be forced into coalition with the Teals. But the Canberra Press Gallery and the Labor Party have to do their job and document what Marine Feruki said on Insiders is only part of the picture.
Do you or your listeners know that the Green Political Party has voted against every piece of national security legislation that have secured the safety of Australians Since September the eleventh every piece of legislation, and what's their attitude.
On the death tax. I want to know their attitude on the death tax. On all of these kinds of issues. They should be examined like any other political party. Let off scot free.
They get off easier than Joe Biden, and that you shouldn't be had to be and that's the.
Way of defeating them, to expose them for what they are.
Now, I want to get your thoughts on the latest news poll data. I went through it earlier in the show, but it shows that the Coalition has sort of creeped the head of Labor in New South Wales, it's increased its lead in Queensland. It is early days, Cameron, but if we were to go to an early election, the Prime Minister does have a thing or two to worry.
About because Labour's primaries move nowhere and it's in fact gone backwards in large terms in terms of trend. And remember back in March of last year when sixty forty was the vote for the vote yes and everyone thought it was okay, and everyone said, oh, but Queensland's gone bad.
But that's okay.
The album is to said we can to lose one state and they lost two states. No, this is a really interesting trend and Peter Dutton's onto something here in terms of the way in which he's assidiously working down the labor primary and New South Wales is the largest state with a huge number of marginal seats in it. So no, I think this Newspoll's alarm bells for labor.
Now Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, he's attacked Peter Dutton, this bloke, I mean, he should not be in the Liberal Party. He's called him a thug on the Project on Channel ten last night.
Take a listen.
What sort of prime minister will Peter Dunton.
Make if he wins?
I think that's something we should contemplate with dread.
Really is a thug?
I mean, Michael, for heaven's sake, why is this man? I mean, and you know, as a labor man you probably think this is fantastic, But why is this man still a member of the Liberal Party so openly as an ex prime minister denouncing the guy who the party which he is a member would like to be the next Prime Minister of the country.
Well, first, I didn't know the Project was still airing.
I think.
Can he do now, and they probably got altern Beleon there to try and boost the last minute to me at ratings.
But I admire loyalty in politics.
You know, people admire John Howard even if they're not liberals, because he's a loyal liberal man. And Malcolm's entitled to his views. But don't you think one of those dummies on the project could have asked him, aren't you personally motivated, mister Turnbull because mister Dutton voted against you and organized numbers against you at the last preselection. And aren't your
answers a bit self interested? You see, if they did that and they had a bit of conflict on their program with some of the easy interviews they give, they might get their listeners back.
I just cannot believe the guys still eve they're the miserable ghost. He strikes again, Cameron Michael, thank you so much for your time. After the break, calls for Joe Barden to step aside Row Louder.
As he bumbles through another public event.
Kacha Garda will join the next Well, there's pressure mounts on Joe Barden to quit the race. He continues to campaign and desperately hemps to prove to Americans that he's up to the job. But it doesn't really matter how hard he tries. The US President simply cannot keep up, let alone stand up, even when his aides are prompting him to.
Let us stand together.
Well for us, so the law. Oh my god, it's so hard to watch.
And it comes as visitor logues have revealed that the president's physician met with a Parkinson's disease specialist in the White House. For more, let's bring in Sky News contributor Kosher Garda Kosher. I mean, you know, the calls for from the Dems for him to exit keep on mounting. We see stuff like that today. I know there are some in the White House and in the Dems who think that it's actually a good thing to get him out doing more unscripted appearances.
I would be keeping him as far away from them as possible.
You know, it is fascinating, Caleb where to be with. There's always that was a strategy last time, and the pandemic provided extra cover to that strategy. You know, these means had gone viral. He's hiding in his basement, campaign from his basement, and obviously that playbook worked.
Now.
The only thing.
That's different between now and ten days ago. Is the media has decided to cover it because it was so undeniably impossible to ignore what broke out on that debate stage. And none of these clips are new. There's so many going back months and even years like it, as you know, but it was very sparse in terms of how the media covered it. Now it's out in the open. They're clearly in the camp of people pushing for him to step down. But I maintain that this is far from over.
There is not consensus clearly with him but also within the party, and it is not a foregone conclusion that that is going to happen, though the pressure is certainly mounting.
Yeah, and of course he also said over the weekend that he was going to come in the overflow room for that bit of INFOJO Now over in the UK, Sir Quis Starmer has of course completed his first day on the job and he is proving that he is a man.
Of his words.
So far is confirmed that the contentious for a wonder plan is already dead. It was interesting though, because obviously this campaign, this election, we sort of knew what the result was going to be, and in fact this win was so set in Stone that one New Zealand reporter decided to do this.
The change in power has appeared inevitable for months, if not years. Today's result was so predictable I was able to confidently film this weeks in advance before flying home to New Zealand.
I mean, I love that so much.
But what a strange thing to look at with their first past the post system of course, where you know, Reform had the third highest share of the vote but only has five seats. Labor had a pretty low turnout overall but has four hundred seats.
Indeed, and you know, good for that reporter. Maybe she's getting an extra day of vacation because she put that package together in I think what you mentioned, Caleb would have been the more interesting story to really actually cover what Reform has done. And I think in some ways overperformed in certain groups and what is that going to
mean for the Stormer Parliament and others. And on the Rwanda thing, it's no surprise that is a seminal issue, obviously a lightning rod issue between the left and the right and so and it was emblematic. So he's not wasting a single day getting rid of that.
Yeah, just very quickly. We've only got a minute left, Kosher. But we've seen the scenes in France today after their second round of votes in their national election. The lift has done much better than.
Expected they have.
There were obviously machinations that were used in that where something like two hundred candidates dropped out so that they cleared the cannibalization or dilution of anybody who's not from Le Pen's party, and the result is what it is. France is very very divided tonight and will be at least for the next year until a future election is held, and that's where we see these riots and other things are sadly only going to probably get worse in that period.
Yeah, and that's the thing I don't understand about this system. I mean, it seems like it's gamed against the opposition because you get an idea of where things are going to go, and then you go for the second round and you can basically change your campaign and get candidates to drop out to do things like that. I don't know that that's entirely fair. Kosher Gada, thank you so much for your time.
That's it for me. I'll be back tomorrow night at eight pm.
Of course, up Now Paul Murray Live, hosted by James Morrow,