Peta Credlin:
All right, let’s get into the wrap of the fortnight. Joining me now, Deputy Executive Director at the IPA, Dan Wild, and News 24 contributor, Karalee Katsambanis. I’ll get into the state of our books in a moment with someone who is out of the Treasury Department, but across the board. Across the board, economically bad news. We’ve got obviously the $1 trillion debt marker crossed today, unemployment ticking up in the data route as well. Almost every day we’ve got a story of someone copping higher rents or falling house values, Dan, but Labour says, “Not us, nothing to do with us and nothing to see here.”
Daniel Wild:
Yeah, I think the passing of a trillion dollars national debt is a marker of our national economic decline. I mean, at one level, there’s nothing special about the number, just because it ticked over doesn’t mean anything dramatically changes, but it’s a symbol of how much our country has changed in a bad way. We used to be an exceptional country.
You remember this. We used to be treated and looked upon by our international peers as different, as better, as exceptional. We were sort of the golden economic boy of the national economic community. We had stable finances. We had a rapidly growing economy that was based on productivity, not population growth underpinned by mass migration, but productivity growth. We had wealth that was being created because of policy that was favourable towards our natural resources, which has been the wellspring of growth since settlement, but this has all now changed.
And as you pointed out in the editorial, the state governments are spending like drunken sailors. My colleague, Adam Creighton, had a report out today documenting the shocking rise to state debt on top of this as well. Now, when we look at the current government, what role are they playing here? Well, as we’ve talked about before, this government is not interested in economic growth. They’re interested in economic redistribution. So they come into power and what they see is a pot of honey that’s there, and they want to take that and distribute it to their sectional political interests. So they don’t have a growth strategy whatsoever. And to the extent that the economy is growing, it’s, as I said, all from population growth. About 90% of the growth is from population. None of it’s coming from productivity. So no wonder people are losing jobs and living standards are going backwards.
Peta Credlin:
Dan, are you surprised by the work I found today in some legislation that there was a deal for foreign companies investing in renewables to have basically a tax-free holiday whilst mum and dad investors are copping changes to CGT, but that has now been extended out to 2040 in a deal with the Greens to keep this legislation away from a Senate inquiry?
Daniel Wild:
Even I was shocked by this, and I probably come at this from a naturally cynical point of view, but even I was shocked to find just how brazen the government has become with dealing out favours. I mean, I just mentioned the sectional interests. I mean, this is how it works. They use the economy, they use the budget as a funnel, as a financial and economic funnel to the interest groups that they prefer who are politically favourable, as you mentioned, to keep the Greens on side.
Now, there’s many facets that are concerning the foreign element to this, the fact that it’s going to continue to underwrite the net-zero disaster, everything that means for regional communities, as you’ve been discussing now for many years as well. So again, when you look at the budget, just as you have done and you go through every nook and cranny, what you realise, again, this is not a nationally-minded government. This is a narrow, sectionally-minded government.
Peta Credlin:
Let’s go to that decision today by Golf Australia, Karalee, because I thought they must have had it wrong. We have seen the International Olympic Committee finally move to say biological sex will be the only determinant when you are competing as a female or competing as a male. It won’t be what you identify yourself with. But lo and behold, Golf Australia say, “Well, they will allow trans and gender-diverse players to compete based on whatever they identify as and not their biological sex.”
Karalee Katsambanis:
Oh, this is ridiculous. I know a thing or two about competitive golf. And what I can tell you is this is opening up a Pandora’s box. It’s very difficult for people to get onto any professional tour as a man or a woman. But once you’ve got a biological male who has been through puberty, they are always stronger than a female.
22 years ago, we had Michelle Wee who missed the Sony Open cut in 2004 by one shot in the open. There was a lot of, what’s the word, enthusiasm and conjecture about that. That was 22-odd years ago. Now, there will be pathways for people that don’t make it onto the male tour, but they want to become a professional golfer and they go this way. And Golf Australia, it’s funny. They’ve reversed their decision in 2016.
I’m really sorry, the world is a very unfair place. But for a small minority of people that may be transgender golfers, you don’t change the rules that have been established to accommodate a small minority. It is going to turn things upside down. I’m really sorry. When you’ve gone through puberty, as I said, as a biological male, you cannot then decide to go onto the women’s handicap system and play women’s golf. And that’s what they’re going to do. This is why it’s been done. It is absolutely ridiculous. We seem to hang our hat on decisions by the United Kingdom, but we won’t accept what the high court said in the UK that a biological female is a woman. This is madness. The rest of the world is laughing at us again.
Peta Credlin:
And of course, we’ve had a lot to say this week about AFL clubs, men not treating women with respect. I’ll leave that for the courts and I support those comments. But what about the Australian Women’s Football League allowing a biological male, 6’2″, 90-odd kilos to compete with women? Now, I’m over six foot. There is no way I could outmuscle a 92-kilo biological male if I’m in the centre square or if I’m trying to run for a goal. I mean, it’s just not going to happen.
Karalee Katsambanis:
Yeah. And that particular person is Freya Golding. And you’ve had three clubs in Adelaide that have made a complaint and they’re willing to actually forfeit matches so they don’t need to put their players who are at risk of injury playing against this player. And the AFL still won’t listen to them either. It is ridiculous. Everything is being turned upside down. This does not happen. This doesn’t happen in the Middle East. This doesn’t happen around other places of the world. Australia always seems to be kowtowing and having to go very woke with some of these things that should just be a very common sense decision.
And for people out there that say, “Oh, we’re all pro-rights,” wait until perhaps you have children or you’re an aunt or an uncle or you’re involved with young people and you actually realise the injury risk of this person at 92 kilos as well. I wouldn’t want to play against them. I’m tall, and it’s an absolute risk. And when you’ve got clubs that have made three individual complaints, good on them, saying to the AFL, “This needs to be addressed.” Why the hell are the AFL going on the side of the woke? Can’t they make a decision? This is ridiculous.
Peta Credlin:
Let’s just be consistent about your words about women AFL. That’s all I’d say on that one. Let’s go to the carbon tax because like a bad penny, it’s back. No surprises though, of course. Daniel, because we saw saddling up to Chris Bowen in Canberra was Malcolm Turnbull. Malcolm Turnbull loved a carbon tax in his day. What do you make of this one that is certainly written up in a discussion paper issued today by Chris Bowen?
Daniel Wild:
Well, there’s a lot of facets to this. I’ve started the headline, which is to do with net zero, because this is all to do with net zero. So number one is Chris Bowen won’t even say the words net zero anymore. You remember his National Press Club address a couple of weeks ago. He didn’t use the words net zero in his address because the public doesn’t support it anymore, but they’re continuing with these policies that the public doesn’t want and that are destroying our economy. But why does Labour like these policies? Why do they like net zero? Because it is a tool to centralise economic control. This is a command and control government, and net zero is the vehicle they use to achieve that.
So they can run the economy from their desks in Canberra. So whether it’s the cars that you can drive, the food that you can eat, the houses that you can live in, the kind of food that we can grow as a nation, the types of industries that we can have, and therefore the type of jobs that you can have, and also what’s taught in our education system around climate change and so forth. This is all about having government control over our economy.
Now, this particular policy couldn’t come at a worse time. You’re going to impose a great, big, new national tax on everything because fuel supply is everything. We’ve just been through this, right? We’ve just had a situation where the price of diesel went up to three plus dollars a litre because of the shortages induced by the Iran war exacerbated by bad domestic policy. Now, what the government is going to do is basically take what happened there and embed that permanently in our economy. They’re doing this because they want to drum out of existence people who drive internal combustion engine vehicles because they want everyone to drive an EV. And they want to, again, control the economy in accordance with their ideological views. That’s exactly what they’re trying to do with this.
Peta Credlin:
I’d also say too, they’re so behind on all their targets and they risk a lot of embarrassment that if they get you out of a car, and you can see it in a lot of cities now, you’ve got to drive at 50 or 40 and some are talking 30 kilometres an hour and obviously people not using cars, that will then automatically bring down emissions without any other changes actually coming on board. So this is also part of manufacturing artificial target, meeting artificial targets. This is also on the table. I’ll leave it there. Thank you both.
This transcript with Daniel Wild talking on Credlin – News24 from 20 August 2026 has been edited for clarity.
