Panel on Paul Murray Live
10 November 2022
PAUL MURRAY: Chris Smith joins us now of course from 2GB and Sky News, and the wonderful Jane Hume joins us in The Man Cave as well, the Shadow Finance Minister who knew every one of those numbers that I was throwing out there, including the divorce rate, which I thought was just you keep your eye on the stats, don't you? So, I reckon, and I've talked about this past couple of days. I love people who speak truth to power and have something to lose. And I love Frank Carbone, who is the mayor of Fairfield. Now of course deputy mayor ended up becoming Dai Le, but in Western Sydney, it's all a very well standing lovely little relationship between the Labor Party at the state level, the local level, the federal level, but he's not given up. He is firing up so hard about these ISIS brides and I love seeing him do it. He did it on the project last night.
(clip of Frank Carbone interview on The Project)
PAUL MURRAY: Chris, I know that the media hates this and wildly it's very uncomfortable talking about but this is red hot and good on Frank Carbone and the Liverpool Mayor because they've got something to lose you because and I'm not talking about Christmas cards I'm talking about if it's the state Labor government or the state of the Federal Labor government, they weren't give money to those local councils.
CHRIS SMITH: Now they are being used as the dumping ground for this big problem that Albanese thinks he's solved by not answering questions about it by bringing them into Sydney by protecting Dan Andrews making sure that they were not arriving in Victoria until after the state election. Well, I'm telling you, I know the camp, the Carbone clan, you couldn't get better Australians if you tried. He is standing up for those in his own community who have seen or witnessed or heard of their friends and family who had been beheaded by those, that those ISIS bride support. He is a hero, Frank Carbone. Have you heard anything dumber than what you heard coming out of Ali's mouth? The refugees are not as worthy as those that had been traitorous and left the country despite being told over and over again. That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard refugees have victims total and other victims. These women are not. They stood beside their men. When the beheading was happening. They expect to be charged and they should be charged.
PAUL MURRAY: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Jane, the attitude of this government is literally to not talk about it. Now if they turned around and said we believe this is the right thing to do, we believe this is the legal thing to do, we believe this is the moral thing to do then actually explain it. Instead Albo gets one question and runs away. They never talked about it in Parliament. They've never put the case publicly as to why this should be happening. Why are they afraid? If they think it's the right thing to do, why won't they own up to it?
JANE HUME: And this is the tip of the iceberg. You know, this is just the first wave of women and children that are coming out of the camps. There are more to come. It's so important that we get the security checks right here. But Frank Carbone, and look to his credit he’s ex-Labor, you know
PAUL MURRAY: This is what I'm saying.
JANE HUME: He’s ex-Labor, so these are his mates that he's challenging.
PAUL MURRAY: Correct.
JANE HUME: And you gotta respect him for that. He is representing as you said, Chris, he's representing the views of his community. Fairfield has an enormous Assyrian population, huge Assyrian, Christian Assyrian population,and of course, a large Vietnamese population. In fact, I think something like 50% of Fairfield City Council identify, well associate themselves with the religious, Christianity or Buddhism.
CHRIS SMITH: And Iraqis, and Iraqis, which is crucial.
JANE HUME: That’s right.
PAUL MURRAY: But this is the whole point. This is not some southern cross tattoo white pride, dude. This is a guy representing a very modern part of a very different Australia than the ones that people would say normally speak like that. But I love that he's talking like that. Because it means he loves his country as much as anyone who wants to talk about things like that. And the fact that this government is just so pissweak that they won’t back in, I just, it annoys me. I want to talk about the IR thing. Because I get how complicated this can be. But so it passes through the lower house today but ‘put your mask on’ voted for it along with the former ABC person. Not entirely sure there's people that Kooyong wanted, but who knows it's what the people who didn't have the balls to vote Greens wanted, so it's what you're getting. What fundamentally changes because I noticed that the PR today was the union movement. And childcare workers were brought down to pray before the cameras most people fell for it and they said these workers will be improved. But the reality is, is that unions can do enormous damage if you don't give them what they want.
JANE HUME: Particularly in small businesses because this will allow unions to enter workplaces that they potentially have never had access to before. And they've defined a small business as 15 employees or less or fewer, but they have included casual employees. So I mean, if you run a cafe, chances are you've probably got 15 employees if you put in all your casual workforce. So these are businesses that have never had to deal with unions before. I heard somebody from Master Builders talking the other day, and they were talking, their big fear of course is also that it can so quickly go to arbitration between the unions and Fair Work, completely cutting out the employer in any part of the negotiations. Now, of course, the problem is this is what they've done is they've taken enterprise bargaining and they've removed the enterprise and they've removed the bargaining. It's gone. It's gone. So there were over 150 I think it was amendments to this legislation before it even got to the lower house. But for heaven's sake, you expect that the Senate, but in the lower House, heaven forbid that they got it so wrong they had to amend it that many times. And there will be more. There is absolutely no doubt in the Senate. But the real problem here is how fast they are pushing this through. So we could now see industrial action, which let's face it is a cost to business. Yet another cost to business that is going to occur almost immediately. Now that is a real worry. Small businesses should be concerned and certainly they are approaching me and saying we got to do something about it.
PAUL MURRAY: But again, right, you talk about priorities, talk about urgency, right. So it's been a bit of a theme this week, right? So $75 million for the voice but not money for the Children's Commissioner to be able to take care of Indigenous kids by our own admission, right? A scenario here, when 10 million people are freaking out about data breaches and doing something to tighten laws there - no no no, we can't do that because we've got to get the unions what they wanted. But what about every one of those business people who thought oh, we better go to Canberra for the Jobs Summit because we got to get in good with these guys because then they went screw us over. They used you as Meat Puppets. He flew on the plane he who used you as a meat puppet that was screwed over it.
CHRIS SMITH: See the Metricons of the world can handle two weeks out of business, they can handle it they've got the bank balance to get back into business and keep it running and get the crown crowns in the cranes moving again when the union decides we can go back to work but not the small business person three days frozen revenue that is totally and utterly unaffordable, particularly after they've been through a frozen two years as it is.
PAUL MURRAY: Yeah. Now there's a lot of data that's coming out of the American election that I won't bore too many people with. But there's one thing in particular that really saved the Democrats yesterday and it wasn't just about the number of women who were voting, it was Generation Z. Now, in an election where you don't have to vote. Generally the assumption is young people - who cares, let's go surfing. That's the assumption that younger people are more activists than previous generations. They're really fired up and they're very, very lefty. All right now little interesting thing that came out about some analysis of this particular generation of the first time voters or those that have only been voting in a couple of elections in Victoria, is that they preferred premiers Daniel Andrews by a margin of 62 undecided 24, to 60% being Matthew Guy. Now remember here apart from anything else, this is the bloke who said you couldn't leave your room. And by this margin, they like him because he is, you know, Dr. Woke and therefore, they're all in. Now Jane, this is a big problem. Because, again, I don't want to slag people off because everyone has their right to their opinion, including the hard left young people, right. But very obviously if you're trying to find a path in the next three years to 76 seats, if the Victorian Liberal Party is trying to find a way to get to a majority, we can’t pretend that young people don't exist. And I think sort of just putting Tik Tok up is not going to help. But they are way lefter, way lefter than the vast majority of the countries. So how the hell do you have two feet in this case? Please answer all of those things at once.
JANE HUME: Well look, all of those things at once. Look, I mean, there's been a tradition that younger people have tended to vote left, and they tend to become more conservative as they get older and they have more responsibilities and they understand some of the implications, particularly the economic implications of the way that they vote. I can’t remember who it was that said it but you know, if you don't vote left when you're young, you haven't got a heart, if do vote left when you’re older you haven’t got a head or something like that. But there's more to it than that. I think young people are far more switched on than they used to be. Now obviously, they're looking down on us and that's the only premier that they've known. So we've been there for a really long time. But there's more to it than that. I actually think young people who are engaged are looking for a movement. They want to see a movement rather than a party, they don't like the idea of political parties. They want to be part of something bigger. And it really the onus is on us, as part of the political parties to create that. That's what Robert Menzies did; he created a movement back in the 1940s. Now it's up to us to recreate that moment.
PAUL MURRAY: Now, well, this is not my policy prescription for the Liberal Party, but how to solve all of its things. One of the things in America that's really interesting that drives some of the foam is they have this thing called ballot initiatives where basically to legalize pot in a state you have to vote for it. So everyone turns up for that and while they're there, well might have seen the D’s all the way as they go right. And again, not my policy prescription but an idea, right? If you're the so called freedom side of things, do you also have to talk about things like drug legalisation, different sex laws? Are you just thinking about a whole different way of things that just freedom means small business freedom means- because clearly to you, and again, it's not a policy prescription. It's just, are there issues that we don't even begin to engage with, that are so fundamental, like if you're a renter, that's all you care about. You don't care about all this stuff, but all the housing policy stuff is always around first time buyers not renters?
JANE HUME: True, and it’s things like you know, vaping is a really good example. Now, I hate vaping. I just hate it, you know, I think it's so uncool. You know, Bogey and Bacall didn't vape, they smoked, but that's in the past. But legalising vaping is something that actually appeals to young people that doesn't to older people, and it is a very small ‘L’ Liberal thing to do. Those sorts of policies that we probably haven't really turned on by just natural conservatism and the age of our membership. We go, ‘oh, I'm not really sure I'm comfortable with that’. But we do have to be consistent in our application.
CHRIS SMITH: I’m less inclined to embrace. I'm less inclined to embrace. I'm more inclined to stand up really hard against the wokeness. This is the cancellation generation. They need to be taught to listen and we brainwash them coming out of school with this stuff too. You're only going to get one side of the climate debate for a start. And you know, Australia can change the temperature of the planet.
PAUL MURRAY: But you can hit them on wokeness and back in vaping, can’t you?
JANE HUME: Yeah, well you can. The problem is, if you tell them they're stupid, you tell them, they're stupid. They're never gonna vote for you. No one votes for somebody that tells them their stupid.
CHRIS SMITH: Yeah but we can have a lively debate and mount our arguments against their workers. And their cancellation about history at all. Absolutely. They emerged out of schools and were brainwashed about.
PAUL MURRAY: This is my thing where and again, I'm not going to bore everyone at this dinner party with this idea right but there's always sort of part of my strain of libertarianism that I always think might be worth part of the mix. When we have the conversation about conservatism. And I know that you know, ideological purists go well, the two aren't the same thing. Paul don't but to most people sitting around and we saw things with same sex marriage. We'll see what's gonna happen with the voice debate all those just got to work out that at some point in time. Just always worth thinking right. Whenever was peak you is great. But that was peak you, that's not peak someone else. For somebody else that might be 10 years too early, 10 years too late. That might be a whole bunch of different things. So you got to think about well hang on when you were peak you, whatever you think that was? Well, there's somebody else at that age right now and what's their expectation about peak? And again, I'm not saying knock down all the statues and burn all the flags quite the opposite. But I'm just saying once you start to think about that, then you start to work out a way to at least build some sort of a connection, but we will wait Watch and see. Till then smoke if you got legally. Alright, thank you very much, Jane. Thank you very much, Chris.