In this interview Daniel Wild appeared on Paul Murray Live – Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research on Australia’s history.
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.
Paul Murray:
Right now, Daniel Wild is, of course, the Deputy Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs. Not to be confused with One Nation’s National Executive Manager, I’ll learn it all off by heart by the time I’m done, the wonderful Lee Hanson, lovely to see you both. Happy Sunday night to you. So Lidia Thorpe, I’m going to play her one more time. I don’t understand how this isn’t an issue. Do I think she should go to jail for the next 20 years? No. But do I think, is there a chance of her being handed a fine, a reprimand? An opportunity for somebody to say, “This is a line that you have crossed yet again,” roll the tape and I’ll get your reactions.
Lidia Thorpe:
And we’ll fight every day and we’ll turn up every day. And if I have to burn down Parliament House to make a point. I am not there to make friends. I’m there to get justice for our people.
Paul Murray:
Lee, free kick from right in front. What do you think?
Lee Hanson:
There to make justice for our people? Comments as such as that, I wonder, does she actually care about this country or care about our people? I’m just gobsmacked, right? Here we have somebody who’s a member of Parliament, who’s meant to be a pillar of leadership in our country and make such violent threats. There is people who work in Parliament House including a member of my family, so yes, I hope she is charged. I hope she’s held to account for her comments because you don’t know what somebody is capable of. And to make such public comments of such hatred scares me deeply. And if any other member of the community made such a comment, the police would be at their door and taking it quite seriously. So what is going to happen here with Lidia Thorpe? I do not feel that she upholds or appreciates the privilege she has of working in Parliament for this country, and I’m ashamed of the comment she’s made.
Paul Murray:
I’m with you completely. Daniel, your thoughts here about whether, again, whether it’s sanctioned, what happens here? Again, democratically elected, and I don’t want the power of the Parliament to boot her all the rest of it here, but sure. I mean, surely you can’t say that stuff in public, can you?
Daniel Wild:
Well, exactly as Lee said, if you said it or I said it or Lee said it, we’d be getting a knock at the door. But because somebody from the protected class and who ticks the right identity politics boxes said it, she’s going to get away with it just like she always does. And that’s the society we live in. We live in a two-tiered society with a different set of rules. So one set of rules that apply to mainstream Australians and another set of rules that apply to everybody else. So I’d be very surprised if there was any meaningful consequences for this behaviour beyond maybe a sternly worded letter from the police. But beyond that, I don’t think we’ll get anything.
And look, I’m always vexed on these kind of issues. To what extent do we pay attention to it, and to what extent do we just ignore it because Lidia Thorpe and those like her love nothing more than a bit of attention? But I do think she’s crossed a line. I love the fact that there’s the Palestinian flag and the Aboriginal flag there. The one flag you won’t see, of course, is the Australian flag, let alone the flag in Victoria who are the people who elected Lidia Thorpe there in the first place. So look, I hope she’s booted out at the next possible opportunity.
Paul Murray:
I love the regularity, Lee, that I ask you this question. What about the latest surge for One Nation in the polls? I mean, again, we saw this and I do love all these people that are waking up to this as a post-election phenomenon. One Nation got three senators elected at the last federal Parliament. None of them had the last name Hanson, right? I wish there was a fourth being someone from Tasmania, but what a sign of this growing movement that has been growing for a long time that now in the national polls is outranking the Greens by one, or in even more reliable numbers, bigger margins? Now, yes, it’s too easy to turn around and say, “Oh, it’s just hardcore right-wing Libs that have decided to walk away.”
The reality is you can do whatever you want with your preference, right? Now, 14% of the country is going to vote One Nation, okay? This is not about a lower house play, it’s about the upper house play that comes as a result. It means you can obviously give your preferences and then when we get into a two-party race that still ends up benefiting the coalition. But this is fascinating to see because Lee, day after day, week after week, at some point, one of these Canberra media types is going to work out. It ain’t a fluke. It is a movement and the movement is on.
Lee Hanson:
Correct, and it is a movement, and you’re spot on, and I love that we keep having this conversation because the polls keep rising and that’s what we’re going to continue to see. People are after strong leadership, they’re after leaders with conviction who are willing to stand up and have the heart and the difficult conversations and not shy away from it. And that is exactly what One Nation does and people are waking up to that. They’re seeing the consistency. For decades now, they’ve had a strong, resilient, tenacious woman who’s led this party who has been knocked from pillar to post and has always stayed true to her word, and she speaks to the grassroots of Australians. Now, One Nation is growing, it is surging. The left-wingers as you want to call them, keep saying it’s just the hard right that’s moving. It’s not people are moving away from the two-party major system, particularly the coalition because they feel that coalition is Labour-lite or too moderate.
For One Nation, we have been rolling out branches across the country. We’ve rolled out, I think we’re about 47 branches currently of 150-plus, and our membership has actually increased over 70% since the last election. So One Nation has growing, we’ve got the leadership, we’ve got the capability, represent a broad range of Australians, and more and more people are coming on board who want to join and putting their hand up already to be candidates in the next election of very strong. So yes, I have no doubt about it. We’ll keep having this conversation, Paul, and it’s great to see.
Paul Murray:
Yeah, I mean look, if our team can go back to the demographics graphic that we were showing before, right? Again, this lazy trope, oh, the hardcore, the hard right-wingers, they’re just flipping. Again, can I talk demos here? All right, so again, in this poll, 14% of people nationally backing in One Nation, 13% of millennials, 15% of Gen X and the baby boomers at 17. Now unsurprisingly the biggest group, almost 30% Gen Z for the Greens, but that is solid growth, multiple areas basically from people not over the age of 55, but from the age of 35, Daniel.
Daniel Wild:
Well look, that’s right, and as we’ve said time and time again, what we see is almost every demographic moving against the coalition if they haven’t already abandoned them. And this is what happens when you have a vacuum of leadership, but it’s on both the left and the right. You’ve got Sussan Ley who may have certain capabilities but has been in parliament for close to a quarter of a century, and a lot of Australians aren’t clear on what it is exactly she believes. Anthony Albanese obviously won the election handsomely, but is not seen as a stronger decisive leader so you’ve got people from both sides of the equation that are looking for alternatives and obviously One Nation provides that to a lot of Australians. The other point I want to make, Paul is in one of the polls that came up on RedBridge, which was published in the Australian Financial Review, if you look at the polling they did on net zero.
Paul Murray:
I’d mentioned it before it’s close.
Daniel Wild:
This is absolutely fascinating because it… Yeah, it shows that 37% want the coalition to dump it, 37% want them to keep it, and the rest want them to, don’t have an opinion on it. Now, that is absolutely fascinating. That should have been the headline of the poll. To have a Labour-aligned poll published in the Australian Financial Review, which is the chief cheerleader of net zero. To admit the community is divided on this issue despite the fact that there hasn’t even been a debate. Imagine we had a debate on net zero. It would very quickly be a 70/30 issue in our way in terms of getting rid of it. And this is why people like Andrew Hastie and Jacinta Price are talking about net zero and immigration. These are two of the biggest issues facing the Australia’s future. That’s what Pauline Hanson and One Nation are talking about and that’s why they’re going off on the polls and that’s why the Liberals are going backwards.
Paul Murray:
Well, and again, that undecided, right? We hear from everyone, right? You go this direction, it’s terminal. You go that direction, it’s terminal. We’ll see. Again, we’ll get Cos on tomorrow because I want to talk a lot more about that undecided, about whom and where and which particular demos and all the rest of it, because I think sometimes that can start to lay a few stones about which way things should go.
Now again, I’m sorry to repeat myself from the opening comments at the start of the show, but Lee, Parramatta council tomorrow will have a vote, which is just about keeping alive and whipping up because there’s a very significant Indian population. In fact, there’s sort of a Little India claim that is made by the council of the diaspora there as a way of trying to, again, build the caricature in and around Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, comments from a long time ago. Forget what the actual transcript says, it’s what somebody told you about who somebody, all of that, right? Local councils passing any sort of moment of time passing comment on federal politicians. What a flare gun into the air for the people of Parramatta that if it’s the majority of the council, that the majority of council doesn’t spend every moment they can on their job. Instead, they’re doing party hack work for their sides of politics.
Lee Hanson:
Correct. Councils need to focus exactly on their job and stay in their lane. Why would they be looking to pass a motion on this matter just to appease what is 11 per cent of their community from a certain nationality before they chose to come to Australia? I’m just baffled as to how this is a priority for local community members. If they actually went out and asked their community members, would they have an overwhelming sense of this is what they want to focus their hard-earned tax dollars on? The answer would be no, and I’ll be very surprised otherwise.
I’m also, I feel sorry for Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, I really do. This issue keeps getting dragged on and on and on. She hasn’t had the support. She hasn’t had the backing that she should have had. I mean, plain and simple, she raised some key issues that, are they factually incorrect? Sure, the delivery and a certain nationality or how it was approached, probably not the right way, and it could have been done a little more decorum, but at the end of the day, she raised an issue about immigration having certain tendencies to vote in certain ways. Shouldn’t that be the conversation? Yep. Here we’ve got council going down a rabbit hole of something that I, sorry, as I say to my kids, nunya. It’s none your business. Why are you touching on it?
Paul Murray:
God bless you. But also, right. Let’s see if the same council decides to bang out a motion about Lidia Thorpe burning down the federal Parliament. Oh no, of course we won’t be going anywhere near there. Now I’ve got a feeling that the bloke from the IPA is going to be very supportive of Tony Abbott’s book, which in part is being supported by the Institute of Public Affairs. It’s a great look at Australian history and he’s one of the first prime Ministers in a long time to do this. And I don’t just mean even in Australia, Winston Churchill is about the highest profile, former prime minister of their country to turn and have a look at a history.
Now, really important. In the launch event that I attended on Friday, there is absolute recognition and no questions about the issues about the early years of the colony. There is no attempt to look away from horrible massacres, but it is about embracing this concept about what makes us who we are and what potential we have about where we go. It’s part of what we’ll celebrate in the next three nights, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday at 7:30, which is the documentary about Tony Abbott’s Australia, or sorry, Australia, a history by Tony Abbott. Have you read it? Did you see a little bit of it, Daniel? And obviously you’d subscribe to the central idea here, which is that our story is complicated, but so is every other country’s, but geez, the high points are pretty damn high.
Daniel Wild:
Yeah, you’re right, Paul. I think the through line in the book is Australia is not without fault, but we are without peer. That’s how I would summarise the book for anyone at home, and I’d encourage everybody to pick up a copy and watch the documentary series. Yes, I have read it. As you said, the IPA was very proud to have played a role in this, in supporting Tony in undertaking this book, and I got the opportunity to read a manuscript before the main book was launched on Friday, and it’s a magnificent book. I think you’re right to say that Tony Abbott, certainly to my knowledge, is the only former prime minister to have written a comprehensive history of Australia. There are others who have written types of histories. For example, John Howard wrote a book on the Menzies years, which is an outstanding book as well.
And I think Tony Abbott is somebody who’s been out of politics for a decade, but he’s made very important and meaningful contributions to our debate in his post-Parliamentary life. Not every former political leader could say the same, and I think this book gives a very fair treatment of Australian history. Certainly it is balanced, but you come away with a very deep, I think appreciation, understanding, and gratitude, that despite all of the challenges that we have in our nation, we are still the greatest nation on earth. And I think the more people who read this book, and I hope a lot of it gets into schools as well, the better because this is exactly the kind of commentary and argumentation we need at this point in Australia’s history. So good on Tony Abbott for this outstanding book, and I would highly recommend to your viewers to watch the documentary series and grab a copy of the book as well.
Paul Murray:
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you, Lee. We will look forward to seeing you again next week.
This transcript of Daniel Wild on Paul Murray Live – Sky News Australia from 12 October 2025 has been edited for clarity.
