In this interview, Daniel Wild appeared on The Rita Panahi show on Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research on immigration.
All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
Rita Panahi:
Let’s bring in Deputy Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs, Dan Wild. Dan, let’s start with Peter Dutton demanding a total ban on arrivals from Gaza as the Albanese government prepares to bring in a permanent visa scheme for Palestinian refugees. Peter Dutton told Sky News he has doubts about the current screening process.
Peter Dutton:
If people are coming in from that war zone and we’re uncertain about identity or their allegiances, Hamas is a listed terrorist organisation. They’ve just committed an atrocity against the Jewish people, the biggest attack on people of Jewish faith since the Holocaust. And that the government wouldn’t be conducting checks, I don’t think people should be coming in from that war zone at all at the moment. It’s not prudent to do so, and I think it puts our national security at risk.
Rita Panahi:
But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese isn’t worried.
Anthony Albanese:
We’re listening to the security agencies when it comes to national security, and the Director General, Mike Burgess will play a critical role in that. And I seek to try to bring people together, not always looking for a wedge or to divide.
Rita Panahi:
But Dan, wasn’t it the [inaudible 00:01:12] boss, Mike Burgess who said having sympathies towards Hamas wasn’t a deal breaker if you want to come here as a refugee?
Daniel Wild:
Well, exactly, and I think it’s pretty rich for the Prime Minister to say that he wants to bring people together. I mean, his main policy was the divisive Voice to Parliament that he spent his first 18 months on. Look, Peter Dutton’s spot on. The concerns that he is raising are the concerns of mainstream Australians, which is why would you bring people in from a war zone when there is no amount of assurance that can be given to their identity, where they’ve been, what they’ve been doing? I don’t understand why you would do that at this time. We know that Labour is their migration policy and their national security policy is not based on our national interest, but based on winning and holding seats in Western Sydney. That’s the problem.
Rita Panahi:
That is a problem. And immigration, again, is on the agenda. The Albanese government is being accused of running a big Australia by stealth programme by letting in record-breaking amounts of migrants. James Morrow reveals in The Daily Telegraph that a record 1.15 million migrants have settled in Australia since Labour took power with nearly one third of Australia’s population now being born overseas. That’s up from 22% in 1983, and it’s far higher, Dan, than many other countries like Canada and the US. These demographic changes are rather dramatic. Are we ensuring that there’s assimilation, that we’ve got people here who have shared values?
Daniel Wild:
Well, unfortunately not. I mean something’s gone very wrong over the last couple of years with the migration programme. The current intake of this government, which has only been there for about 26 months, is already higher than the entire [inaudible 00:02:54] Keating government, which was 156 months. So to put that in context, this is a truly unprecedented, dramatic surge to our population. There’s the economic problems, which is per capita growth is going backwards. There’s the social problems where we have this social cohesion issue, which is clearly in display, and the political problems, which as we discussed before, you’ve got the tail wag of the dog with Labour focused on the electorate rather than the national interest. So I think Australians understand that yes, migration can be very important to our nation and has been, but the current system simply is not working.
Rita Panahi:
No, and I think people are feeling that in various ways. It’s not just housing, it’s not just hospital waiting lists. It’s just across a whole bunch of issues that impact just about every household. But let’s have a look at the top 10 countries where migrants are coming from. A few surprises here. Nearly one in five are coming from India, 12% from China, then we’ve got the Philippines. Nepal and Columbia, those two surprised a few people. And rounding up the top 10, we’ve got UK, New Zealand I’m sure will be in there, Vietnam, Pakistan and Thailand. So a diverse range of countries. But the question is the numbers and whether we can absorb them because housing approvals and we are just not building enough homes to house the people coming in here permanently.
Daniel Wild:
Well, that’s right. A lot of those migrants are also international students. And we know that the international student market is basically a racket for vice chancellors. The massive increase that we’ve had, they claim it’s a massive export industry, but a lot of the students are here working. If you’re working in the local currency, spending in the local currency, it’s not on export. So there’s a real problem with the universities and their reliance on international students.
Rita Panahi:
Now, Australian Sports Commission’s CEO, Kieren Perkins [inaudible 00:04:50] has told the project we should be proud of Raygun the break-dancer and what he called her awesome display at the Olympics.
Kieren Perkins:
And all of the commentary and the dialogue that’s gone on, all the keyboard worries and haters out of there, get back in your box. We are Australia, we are Australian. To have one of our athletes so proud to wear our uniform and then to bring what’s unique about us to the international stage, we should all be proud.
Rita Panahi:
But in comments on the project’s own Instagram page, proud is the last thing Aussies are feeling right now. One commenter said, “Raygun’s display was insulting and shameful and a display of privilege and appropriation.” And another said, “It’s not hating to say the performance stank. And there must have been some females in Australia that could do better.” We’ll be talking to a break-dancer aficionado who’s really into this sort of stuff a little bit later in the programme. But Dan, I’ve got to say, I don’t appreciate Australians being bullied into silence. What, we can’t be critical of something as public as an Olympic performance? When the whole world’s laughing at it, we’re not allowed to?
Daniel Wild:
I don’t get it. The judges gave it zero. So it’s not as if the judges said it was a great performance and people are making fun of it.
Rita Panahi:
Go bully them, not us.
Daniel Wild:
It was objectively a bad performance. I don’t understand those who are defending. I’ve got no problem with her as a person. I just don’t understand why is she there at the Olympics? Why is that sport at the Olympics? And couldn’t the money that was invested into that particular sport been of use elsewhere? So it just seems such a strange scenario. And we’re sort of being gaslit. “We saw it, it was so awesome, it was so good.” No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t a good performance.
Rita Panahi:
It wasn’t. I genuinely believe, and I’m not saying this to be bold or hyperbolic, I could do better. I have a hundred percent confidence. Give me half a day, I could put together a better routine. And a lot of people feel that way. So when you’re looking at something at Olympic level and you think you can do better, there’s a problem. Now let’s talk about the Elon Musk, Donald Trump interview. It went for two hours. But the media, I’ve got to say were not impressed. USA Today are amongst the media slamming it. They called it an unmitigated disaster between, listen to this, “A right wing loon and a fascism curious billionaire.” They also said, “He was rambling, babbling on about crowd sizes and immigration and President Joe Biden and whatever else seemed to pass through his mind,” and just a whole lot of other nonsense. But the numbers don’t lie. The number of people who’ve listened to that interview, who have heard parts of it or all of it is enormous. I think by any measure, it was an enormous success if you want to get your message across.
Daniel Wild:
Well, exactly. And one of the key parts of a democracy is for candidates to engage in open form discussion. A two-hour discussion, Trump will routinely do rallies that are one, two plus hours. Whether you like him or not, the reality is that he’s probably been one of the most open and transparent presidential candidates we’ve seen. And we need to have more of these long form debates and discussions, not less. Kamala Harris won’t even front a 10-minute interview, let alone do a two-hour sit down. So which one is better for democracy?
Rita Panahi:
Well, absolutely. And the fact that so many topics were discussed in a very casual manner with two people speaking, I think it just gave a great insight into where that candidate stood on a range of issues. And that’s what you want as a voter. You want to know what the candidate is going to do in office. Now, just before he left for yet another holiday, President Joe Biden, remember him, he sat down with CBS and he again pushed that lie about President Donald Trump calling white supremacists in Charlottesville, “Very fine people.”
Joe Biden:
The consequence of those neo-Nazis and White supremacists come out of fields in America with torches carrying Nazi banners. Fresh went to the then President Trump and said, “What do you think?” He said, “They’re very fine people on both sides.” I knew then I had to do something, and that’s how I decided to run.
Rita Panahi:
I cannot believe we are still hearing this absolute lie that has been debunked over and over again because the whole thing’s on video. We’re still hearing it. And there was no pushback from that interview. In fact, he reinforced that lie. It’s a hoax and a lie. Even the left wing Snopes, the fact-checking side has belatedly acknowledged it’s a lie. And let’s go to the tape because this is what President Trump actually said.
Donald Trump:
And you had people, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the White nationalists, because they should be condemned totally, but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and White nationalists. Okay?
Rita Panahi:
“They should be condemned, totally.” He was talking about the people who were at that protest because they didn’t want to statue to come down. I would argue those people are on the right side of history, and there were very fine people amongst them. They’re not the neo-Nazis. That’s like pretending that the women’s March in Melbourne were all neo-Nazis because a bunch of idiots turned up and gate crashed their protest. I can’t believe this lie has still got currency now in 2024.
Daniel Wild:
Well, exactly. And when you actually look at the whole clip, Trump said the exact opposite, the exact opposite of what they accused him of. I think that the hope that we do have is with social media, with Twitter and with others, this is actually being uncovered. 20 or 30 years ago, we never would’ve known that this was all a hoax and this was all a lie. But the reality is, I think more and more people, particularly what happened in COVID and other things, a lot more people are beginning to realise that the mainstream media is not always what it seems.
Rita Panahi:
Absolutely. Dan Wild, thank you so much for your time this evening.
Daniel Wild:
Thank you.
This transcript with Daniel Wild talking on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia from 15 August 2024 has been edited for clarity.
