26 June 2024

Topics: Fatima Payman, Matt Kean, Pill Testing Concerns (in Victoria), Wentworth Electorate.

E&OE


Peta Credlin
:

To my panel: Shadow Environment Minister, Senator Jonathon Duniam and Senior Fellow at the Menzies Research Centre and now a Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute, all the way from Budapest, Nick Cater. Well, thank you gentlemen. We’ll start with your parliamentary colleague, Senator Payman if I can, Senator Duniam. You had a ringside seat to yesterday’s circus. Are you surprised? This is the third time in Labor history, and a second time only that a Prime Minister has had to deal with someone crossing the floor inside Labor. But this time they have had no sanction from Anthony Albanese.

Senator Duniam:

Yes Peta, it was a circus and it continues to be a circus. This is a test of the Prime Minister’s authority and when challenged, it completely crumbles away. Everyone remembers what happened to Mal Colston, and everyone remembers what Penny Wong, who later in life became a very strong proponent of same sex marriage, did in the earlier days when she voted against it in solidarity with Labor. Their history is they are a party of solidarity, but that seems to have been chucked out the window and a new precedent set. And from inside Labor, they’re telling me it’s one set of rules for the left, which Fatima Payman is from, and one set of rules for the right. So, watch this space. I think there’s more to come, but he has no credibility now when it comes to upholding that Labor tradition of solidarity.

Peta Credlin:

I don’t often get messages from the Labor left as you imagine, but I do get a lot of messages from the Labor right and I’m telling you they are angry as you report. That’s certainly coming through very clearly to me. The fallout from Matt Kean’s appointment to the Climate Change Authority continues. Dennis Shanahan has revealed in The Australian that the outgoing Chairman, Grant King, was subjected to an integrity and conflict of interest probe and it came just after he supported calls for Australia to consider nuclear energy. I don’t think this is a coincidence. Nick, I think they put the dogs on him as soon as soon as he called for nuclear power. What do you think?

Nick Cater:

Well, here in the former Eastern Bloc, it feels like a Soviet purge Peta. You know, get rid of the person who’s not towing the party line. Look, clearly what is happening is that they want yes men in that job. They want people that will go along with the Labor dogma, you know, which is pro renewables and anti nuclear. And they’ve got that in Matt Kean. I’d like to see Matt Kean, actually I think what he should do, really do himself a favour and just put all his cards on the table. I mean, does he have interests in renewable energy? I have no idea, but I think he needs to make that clear because if he’s going to be enormously pro renewables, as he seems to be as he has been in the past, then he needs to make clear that he’s doing that as an Independent Commissioner, and not just as the mouthpiece of the renewable energy barons. So that’s, I think, the emphasis on Matt Kean if he’s to be taken seriously in this role. He’s got to do that pretty quickly I think.

Peta Credlin:

Let’s go to Victoria. Pill testing there will start come summer at the festivals, but police have argued that festival goers could claim they’re on the way to a testing site in order to avoid searching. Police Association Victoria Secretary, Wayne Gatt, has warned pill testing, he says, diminishes the illegality of illicit drug taking, in a particular area at a particular time, and flies directly in the face of long accepted policing principles, personal responsibility. Well, that’s a new one, isn’t it? And the law? I mean, this just gives the drug dealers, Jonno, a free pass. I mean, they can take whatever they like now into these festivals, it’ll be a free zone they can sell and ply their trade and you know, we’ll all bear the consequences.

Senator Duniam:

Yeah, we will. Our health system and families will break down. I mean the problem with pill testing and thank God for the police union … across the country, police unions I’ve always found to be one of the more sensible groups of employee representative groups … and they are speaking good sense here. But aside from creating this loophole on legality, pill testing fundamentally legitimises what can only be described as illegitimate. Drugs that are illicit are harmful. There is no amount of pill testing that can prevent them from being addictive, prevent them from causing cognitive impairment, prevent them from all sorts of other long-term health issues. And the Allan Government with their mad agenda to make everything free and happy and wonderful like this is going to cause so many unintended consequences. So, I say good on the police association and I hope that the Victorian Parliament hear what is being said here and put some proper ring fencing around this.

Peta Credlin:

Nick, John Howard was speaking at an event in Sydney. It was an event for the new Liberal candidate in the seat of Wentworth, which is of course is held by a Teal. He says the time for the Teals is up.

Nick Cater:

Yeah, I agree. I agree with John Howard. I wouldn’t actually, you know, put money on it because when you’ve got an independent in a seat as you know it’s somehow sometimes very, very hard to dislodge them. But I think what we now see is the Teals are just another green brand. It’s just a luxury green brand. I think, as a lot of us spotted before the last election, it’s nothing to do with the Liberal Party or its values. And the idea that they’re a softer version of the Liberal Party is nonsense. They’ve gone with Labor and I think what you’re seeing now is that the chickens are coming home to roost over nuclear, we can see that every Teal MP that I’ve seen so far has been against nuclear and pro-renewables. Well, if you look at their funding at the last election, which mainly came from renewable energy barons through Climate 200, you’ve got to ask, are you really getting the independent voice that they promised?

Peta Credlin:

I’ll leave it there. The ANU study on the election says that four out of five of the Teal voters had never in their life voted Liberal. So do not think that they’re disaffected Liberals. Thank you, gentlemen. Enjoy Budapest, Nick, we’ll speak to you next week.