Panel with Paul Murray, Paul Murray Live
20 October 2022
PAUL MURRAY: Just very quickly because everyone is probably sick of hearing about Lydia Thorpe, but you obviously see how she plays in the parliament. No punishment today Deputy Senate Leader oh goodness me, nothing will change. The greens are as piddle weak as you could possibly imagine. So Jane, I mean, really what was today about is this finally the line in the sand you have to have literally add a relationship with a former bikie and then they have a problem.
JANE HUME: I think we're actually hugely disappointed but not at all surprised. I mean, this is a woman that, from the moment she walked into the Senate she has disrespected the voters, she has disrespected the Senate chamber, she has disrespected the parliament she has abused police, she is constantly difficult to work with. I cannot understand if she doesn't believe in the institution, in the integrity of the institution, why she is there in the first place. And let's be honest, the Greens are very good at pointing the finger, wagging the finger at other people about their integrity and their judgment. Well, let's see how they respond to this one. And then the one that I'm really looking forward to hearing from is David Shoebridge. And the reason why I want to hear from David Shoebridge is because I think that there was some pretty choice words coming out of his mouth, around the judgment of Gladys Berejiklian not that long ago in analogous, although not at all similar circumstances. Well, let's see, David Shoebridge who is the spokesperson for justice in the Greens. Let's see how he reacts to this.
PAUL MURRAY: But of course you know what's going to happen here James, which is none of them will be available for comment for the next few days. Let's get to the budget and go from there. But it really has exposed the fraud that they are, but 10% of the Australian public doesn't care they'll vote for them regardless of rat beggary.
JAMES CAMPBELL: Well, their problem with Lydia Thorpe is she's not really a green. She's an indigenous black politician, and her agenda comes from that world and the people she wants to square up against come from that world. She's in the Greens and they thought it would be nice to have her there as convenient and lovely to have an Indigenous person but they are basically riding a tiger with her she doesn't give a toss about them or their agenda. And I, it was a Labor minister standing next to the Midwinter Ball when she did her run through. And he turned to me and said she will not end this term in the Greens she will end up outside it. Bandt I think has today taken the first step towards uncoupling the Greens from her. Now, it's interesting, her statement said, well I've shown poor judgment but there was, she accepted that, but she did not apologise for what she'd done. She did not apologise for the embarrassment she caused the Greens. She's not, it was a real sorry, not sorry, statement that was only four lines long. This has got a long way to run, I think. She's um. Because the problem they've got with her is that they've outsourced their negotiations with the government over the Voice to this person who has the track record that you've shown in those clips tonight.
PAUL MURRAY: Yeah, well, also don't forget too. it's not like they didn't, she was already a member, I think at the lower house with the seat of Northcott once right. So they had their little brush with it, but they decided to renew her political career and put her up into the Senate when of course there was the vacancy, when one of the former leaders was gone. So they weren't really, they knew what they were playing with. So let's wait and watch in the next little while. Now, I cannot believe this Jane. There is a book that is basically suggesting that school in and of itself the way education is put together right now is essentially just nothing but colonialism. It's about learning whiteness. This is part of the report here, which is a book called Learning Whiteness, flying the Australian flag, commemorating the Bicentennial and having a Eurocentric curriculum are cited as examples of Australia's education system that is used to defend and fortify colonialism and white domination. There's also a story around today there's a public school that’s decided we're not flying the Australian flag anymore. We all know what's wrong with this. But how do we stop this garbage becoming some sort of text that can't possibly be refuted, being taught to every teacher in the country?
JANE HUME: I’ve read this. This was by two academics at Melbourne University in the Department of Education, I thought and the moment I saw these two academics, I thought oh wouldn't they be fun to sit next to at a dinner party. Not. Quite frankly, anybody that thinks that, you know teaching failing to teach our six year olds critical race theory is a failure on behalf of the education system, get a grip. What we want is for our children to be able to read, to write, to add and subtract, to multiply, ideally do long division, although quite frankly, that was never really a good skill set of mine. But most importantly to think for themselves, and that's not at all what this report is saying quite the opposite. It is indoctrination, apologist divisive indoctrination. And that's not what we want from our education system. You know, parents do not care about this. They care about what their kids are learning at school and how they can afford to pay for the uniforms and school shoes.
PAUL MURRAY: Absolutely. But also but you mean James this week yet another piece of evidence that writing skills going backwards. This is on top of all of the stuff that's out of the pandemic, the five, the 10, the 15 years before that. This week, the Prime Minister of Singapore was in Australia having a chat to Albo about green energy. You know what we should be exchanging with Singapore. How they run their schools.
JAMES CAMPBELL: Absolutely. The thing about, to use a term of the woke elite, gaslight, those of us who are educating our children and home for two years on and off. They can't gaslight us about the state of the school system anymore. I think one of the great opportunities that was before the Liberal Party in Victoria this state election was seizing standards in state schools. I hope they've got a lot more to say about that. They haven't said enough about it. Now, reading this book, looking at what is in this book. This basically, more or less is a large chunk of the state school system in Victoria already. The history has arrived down here. We don't sing the national anthem at my school. We got rid of it because it wasn't inclusive enough. But then Morrison changed the words but for some reason it never came back. I've never worked for reasons I can't quite get my head around. We've had smoking ceremonies by our kids school, even though it's supposed to be a secular school. We've you know, it's very secular. This is the state school motto. And to be honest, there's a lot of stuff about First Nations or Indigenous people which I don't object to, but it's almost to the exclusion of just about everything else as far as I can see. You know, they're not being taught, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Aztecs or anybody else. It's just it's a constant diet of the First Nations people at our school we have in fact, renamed all the buildings with Indigenous names after I don't know how they found out what their indigenous names were. Every single one now has a new Indigenous name, which was they were awarded this year. Very exciting.
PAUL MURRAY: What a thrilling experience it must be for Parent Teacher nights or school assemblies. I kept the feeling I'm going to be filling up for the next few years with my little one in the early days of primary school. Jane is Shadow Finance Minister, I gotta finish up here on expectations of the budget. Now, despite everything that they have said, Katy Gallagher has confirmed they will spend more money in the existing budget right which means it's going to be a bigger deficit. Inflation is going to go up and they're not going to cut anything anywhere, which means all of it gets worse.
JANE HUME: In fact, they said it was going to be a Labor bread and butter budget, but we know what that means - high tax, high spend. This is going to be the ultimate test I think for Labor. Can they deliver a budget that actually suits the economic circumstances that they're facing today, rather than the ones that they wished they were facing? Are they going to be able to deliver a budget that's going to get inflation under control, making sure that they're controlling spending not just, you know, putting their hands in the air and saying, ‘Oh, well NDIS is going up, aged care is going up. What can we do?’ Are they going to be able to tackle the cost of living, which is the number one issue for Australians right now? And are they going to be able to build a budget that has productivity measures in it, not just equity measures, productivity measures that will actually improve the economy that will grow the economy, improve prosperity for all Australians? This is their test.
PAUL MURRAY: We will see how they go and we'll talk to you again later through the week. Thank you guys, do appreciate it.