In this interview John Roskam appeared on Paul Murray Live – Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research into Australia’s economic competitiveness.
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:
Let’s get into a conversation now with two guys who are kind of team red, kind of team blue, but more importantly, they’re from great think tanks, but they’re very free to speak their mind and they will do so right now. John Roskam is of course with the IPA. And Ed Cavanough is with The McKell Institute, a carryover champ from last week. Welcome back, my friends.
So this bloke from the Smart Energy Council goes and plays a home game, which is giving a speech in Canberra to a room that, of course was going to say nothing other than, “Oh, yes, absolutely. Wonderful. What a great idea. Oh, the National Party, they’re terrible. One nation. Oh.” But he decided to get a little bit excited and dare I say that sort of the inner lefty in him who goes, you know what would be great, no opposition. So he decided to drop this as a reference to China as being the way to go when it comes to getting what you want out of the government.
John Grimes:
One thing you can say about the Chinese system is that China plays as a team.
Paul Murray:
Ed, what the heck did he mean? And would he slightly regret it once he got back to the hotel? Because this is ridiculous.
Ed Cavanough:
Well, he might be regretting it after the coverage tonight. Look, my view is that we shouldn’t be looking to China for influence on our energy policy. Whichever way we’re going on energy policy. I don’t think we should be looking at them for inspiration on a clean energy future, nor should we be looking at them for inspiration on a fossil fuel led future. And the sort of irony in this is there’s a lot of outrage about this individual citing some of the climate achievements of the Chinese government, but we always hear here in Australia that we should be doing less on climate because of what China’s doing. Because they’re going down a certain energy path around fossil fuels so we should do the same.
Paul Murray:
10 year highs [inaudible 00:01:46]-
Ed Cavanough:
In my view we should be going an Australian way, and we shouldn’t necessarily be taking our cues from the Chinese government on energy policy, whichever way that looks.
Paul Murray:
Yeah. My issue is as always, right, what I’m saying, do you have to do something? Sure. 1% of the world’s problem, and if you’ve got 45 of the 60 minutes on that climate clock, kind of in many ways, either making things worse or spinning their wheels. That’s my issue. It’s not an argument against it, a need for certain transitions.
But John, again, to the heart of it here, right? Oh, China, they all play as a team. They all play as a team. Oh, yeah. You try and be a free thinker in China. You try and say, I don’t want that in my backyard. No NIMBYs in China. No NIMBYs there.
John Roskam:
Well, this is the problem, Paul, that too many people from the world of business talk about the certainty and the direction and the clarity that totalitarian regimes provide. Well, there is a difference in Australia, we are a democracy. You can speak your mind. For the moment, at least we can debate climate change, we can debate energy policy. And the tragedy of what was talked about in the press club this week is that the speaker, John Grimes, played a significant role in the last federal election. His NGOs costing of the coalition’s nuclear power policies were cited by the government, and he had a huge role, huge influence in the debate. They’ve acknowledged they donate to the Labour Party, and here’s some bloke telling us we should be like China.
Paul Murray:
Yeah, it is honestly one of those moments where you just go, cool your horses. That’s too far. Right? You might think, look at the scoreboard 90 something seats here, and there’ll be no opposition for any time. The fat bloke yelling on the telly, who cares, right? The people watching it all, they just keep voting the way they do. Seriously, no, that was a bad call today.
Now, perfect example about what we refer to and everyone’s referred to as well, is a bit of a sort of a gulf between, dare I say, the front end of the plane and the people who can’t even afford to fly on the plane, be it the elites or anything else, would be half of all economists telling consumer website, oh, we’ve turned the corner. Cost of living crisis is over because this indices and this month and carry the one and carry the two. Nothing to see here. And another consumer website that says that more than half of Australians have serious mental health conditions because of the cost of living.
Let’s talk not about whether we’ve turned the corner or not. Let’s keep it at the distance between two worlds, John. Now to me, it is that thing where, and I have always banged on about it, which is when you get anything that tells you millions of Australians are, then it starts to move its way towards the top of my attention list. So 3 million Australians this close to homelessness, three and a bit million Australian households that are going to run out of food. I’m going to talk about that. Some people will want to swat it away because it’s not going to matter politically or it’s not that interesting to watch on television. But bugger, I’m going to talk about it. What do you think about this little gulf here? Again, we’re kind of talking about the Ponds Institute versus the Palmolive Institute. We’re not talking about the IPA and The McKell. So I’m getting that it’s not great intellectual rigour here. But it does seem that you’ve got two people with two very different worldviews.
John, which one do you think actually matters? And it’s going to disappoint people because it’s going to be people more like the front end of the plane and that bloke talking about China?
John Roskam:
Well, it’s the view of mainstream Australians that has to count. Absolutely. And both political parties, the two major political parties tend to forget this. The people setting interest rates, the people in Canberra, tend to forget these things. The challenges that mainstream Australians have now, which are absolutely real around the cost of living crisis and their inability and capacity to pay their mortgage rates, these challenges go back years. Remember we had the RBA governor telling us, don’t worry, interest rates are going to be lower for longer. That wasn’t the case. People listened to the experts, and now sadly, they’re suffering the consequences and things have to change.
Paul Murray:
Yeah. Again, Ed, I know this is sort of the shallow end of the pond in terms of the research fields, but still two very different world views. I think one is rather contemptuous of the other, but what do you think?
Ed Cavanough:
Well, look, I don’t know if we’d need to be expanding the RBA’s mandate into managing Australia’s mental health in addition to all of its current objectives. There’s been a really substantive reform process of the RBA over the last few years. I think that should be welcomed. The fact that we’re now not having to go through this every single month is reassuring, it’s sort of eight or so times a year.
But this does speak to the underlying anxiety that is going to be around for a long time in the wake of this cost of living crisis. Now, these crises don’t just end on a dime as soon as the inflation rate gets low. We’ve seen in past recessions and other economic challenging periods where there is a long tail, people really feel that, and those consequences are going to be there. So the government needs to be really attuned to that. But I think so to do some of these policy makers as well.
Paul Murray:
I’m with you. All right, take quick break. Back with more. Now, I don’t know about you, Ed, but I know that John loves his puppy, all right? And he’s scratching at the door like a puppy wanting to go outside because he wants to talk about, and rightly so, the ACT government telling you how much time you have to spend with your pets.
Thank you so much for watching. We are here in conversation this evening with from the Institute of Public Affairs, none of the wonderful John Roskam and here with Ed Cavanough as well, who is with The McKell Institute left, right, but there’s lots of things to talk about here.
Now, John, have we got a photo of your puppy here? I think you sent a lovely photo of your puppy. So any excuse to get a puppy on the TV. Oh, no. Hello, hello, hello. All right, what’s their name and how do you feel about the ACT government putting out a rule saying you must interact with your animal for a minimum of three hours a day?
John Roskam:
Well, Paul, that’s Delphi our wonderful caboodle, lying on her bed, which is the territory that she owns and possesses. I’m a dog person. I’ve grown up with dogs all my life, most of them have been rescue dogs. And look, a measure of a civilised society or one of the measures is how we treat our animals. How do we treat our companions? And the ACT government, only in Canberra, is now consulting on potential new laws that affect pet owners around how they care for their pets and particularly their dogs. And many of the suggestions are sensible, around shade, around provision of clean water and so on.
But one of the ideas is that it should be a law that you have to play with your dog for three hours. You have to give it care and attention for three hours a day. Now, how this is going to be enforced, no one knows how, whether this is going to be the single most important thing the ACT government does in 2025 is a mystery to most people. But it just reveals misplaced priorities. It reveals that we can’t rely on people to look after themselves and look after their pets. And it just reveals so much that’s wrong about Canberra, notwithstanding how much we do love our pets.
Paul Murray:
Correct. Now, I’ve just received… This is actually really… I’ve received a message here from the ACT government, wink, I haven’t. But it is that watching Paul Murray live will officially count as one of the three hours. So if you can take a photo right now of your dog watching this show with you and send it to me at [email protected] and we’ll show them on the show tomorrow, then we know at least one of those hours is being well spent together.
Ed, you foreshadowed a very interesting issue when we last spoke, which was about smelters, the need for greater financial support. And well, I’m not suggesting you had any sort of inside running whatsoever, just a couple of days later, the federal government comes out and says that it’s time to start getting behind them and helping them out, specifically the one that you mentioned.
Ed Cavanough:
Well, that’s it. Look, there’s a long road ahead here. I think we did see comments from the Prime Minister suggesting that the government would be open to some sort of federal intervention into the Nyrstar smelter, which is operational both in, well, there’s one in South Australia, one in Tasmania as well. The problem is, as I flagged last week, this is sort of industry-wide, we’ve got these challenges across the entire economy. I welcome, I’m very much in support in principle of government support in this space. But we also have to be really careful here because there is a bit of a risk that you set a precedent where some of the more bad faith actors and investors potentially in this space kind of intentionally purchase an asset and then in the long run hope that government does come to the table and support them when it’s doing poorly.
So whatever package does get announced in the coming weeks or months, whenever that may be, it needs to be very carefully calibrated to not set that precedent, but to also practically support this smelter in this industry, which is critical to our sovereign capability as a country being able to build things, being able to make things, which is increasingly important given how volatile our regional economy is.
Paul Murray:
All right. Lads, I’ve got about 60 seconds, but I want to say here, because obviously no one ever takes a grab from a talk show and run it out of context when you’re running for parliament later in your life, so think of that. But the Epstein thing. Now, I’ve got to say I’m not a conspiracy theory person, but certainly there’s a lot to read about on this particular issue. Now I’m going to open the door to both of you. What’s the one thing that may not be true, but for some reason you keep reading articles about it? Ed?
Ed Cavanough:
Well, you put me on the spot. I’m not sure. I mean, look on the Epstein thing itself, I mean, my God, who knows what’s going on there? That’s not something I sort of spent a lot of my time thinking about fortunately-
Paul Murray:
I like that you’re keeping the notebook clean because he’s running for something somewhere. This is the test if you’re running for Parliament.
Ed Cavanough:
Yeah. Exactly right. No, not at all.
Paul Murray:
John, what’s the one that just ever so slightly you know it’s probably not true but every now and then you read too much about it?
John Roskam:
Paul, I can send you the list of a dozen different podcasts I’ve tuned into on the JFK assassination.
Paul Murray:
Yes. Yeah, I’m not a great believer in the magic bullet theory, but that’s just me. We’ll see whether you’ll get cancelled for saying such things. Lads, do appreciate it. Thank you. All right, quick break. Back with more.
This transcript featuring John Roskam on Paul Murray Live – Sky News Australia from 9 July 2025 has been edited for clarity.
