Chris Smith:
His column is in the Australian newspaper today. He’s also a senior fellow and Chief Economist with the Institute of Public Affairs, Adam Creighton, welcome to the programme.
Adam Creighton:
Good morning, Chris. Great to be here.
Chris Smith:
Ceasefire. Did annihilate a civilization work, do you think?
Adam Creighton:
Look, I mean, no one really knows the truth of this except the Iranians themselves in the leadership, because Trump’s language obviously was very scary and incendiary and certainly not standard protocol for these sorts of negotiations. Look, who knows? It may have pushed them into wanting to do a deal via Pakistan that we all know about now, but of course, there’s this complete disagreement over what the deal actually entails and very vigorous debate as to who’s actually got the upper hand.
I mean, there’s many commentators, including those who are very pro US who say that Iran seems to have “won” this because it’s maintained control of the Strait, which it seems to have done so. And of course, Israel would like the war to keep going, at least in relation to Lebanon, so I really don’t expect this truce to hold for many days.
Chris Smith:
Yeah. I wouldn’t compare what’s gone on in Iran to somehow a wartime victory, because it’s been hammered. It’s lost some of its most senior intelligence, military, government individuals and operators, and that to me sends a message that it has been depleted immensely. So we’ve got to keep that in mind, but in terms of hanging onto the Strait of Hormuz and using it over the head of Trump, I think they’d come up at the 11th hour with this idea that the agreement involved Lebanon. It probably never did, and I wouldn’t trust the Iranians as far as you could throw them.
Adam Creighton:
Yes. Yeah, that’s true. Look, I don’t think it probably did. I think you’re right. And so it’s true to say that the US has had a lot of success. There’s a lot of knee-jerk anti-Trump commentary, as you might expect around this. Basically, most of the US mainstream here wants him to fail because they’re loathing that was so great. But the reality is their navy, their air force, much of the army, certainly their ability to launch ballistic missiles has been severely impaired. And it’s not like that they can get all that back anytime soon. It’ll take many, many years, so I think he has degraded their force. The regime’s just hanging on, obviously, because there were so many assassinations at the top level, as you point out, so let’s just wait and see. I mean, it could have been enough to topple internally.
Chris Smith:
Yeah. Yeah. Now, you’ve gone into bet today in the Australian newspaper for having more MPs. I must admit, I did splutter over my first coffee very early this morning. Why do we need more of a cohort we have little trust in?
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, look, it’s good question. Well, I think because our system at the moment is just so broken. And in my view, it’s partly broken because there are too few members of parliament. There’s only 150 basically, which is far lower than say Canada, which has 340, the UK, 650. And there are two problems there. It means that the number of voters per seat or per MP in Australia is about 125,000, which is extremely high. And that means, of course, those MPs don’t really have any realistic hope of ever meeting or hearing the views of their constituents.
So if you had more MPs, there’d be fewer voters per MP. They’d be able to visit them and hear their views more likely. And of course, I’m not saying this should be done without cost savings elsewhere. I mean, it’s basically a drop in the bucket, the cost of MPs. I mean, the government spends $780 billion a year, and the cost of a few extra MPs would be 78 million, so it’s a tiny, tiny percentage. And I think it would make for a better parliament.
You’ve also got a situation where you have so many ministers and assistant ministers, blah-blah-blah, that they take up almost all the backbench of the parliament. So there’s no just ordinary independent backbenches there that are willing to criticise their own government, because they all want promotions of some sort. So it’s really not a functional parliament whatsoever. It’s just a costly rubber stamp for the government, the Australian Parliament, really. It’s not functioning as it was intended. So look, I think if we dramatically increased the number, that’d be great.
Also, just quickly, when the Senate goes up for election, you only get six senators up for election each state. And because that’s an even number, and because Australia tends to be divided 50-50, left, right, you just get three-three and it’s kind of gridlock all the time. At least if there was seven senators up in a larger Senate, that’s an odd number and you’re more likely to get at least an ideologically a different Senate, like left or right at least, so the government’s got more ability to actually do things.
Chris Smith:
You’ve got me over the line on the odd number in the Senate, that’s no-brainer. But I just think, are we hearing from MPs in their electorates saying that they are absolutely inundated with constituents who want a bit of their time? Are we hearing that they can’t keep up?
Adam Creighton:
Well, look, I think that’s true. Many of them say so. I mean, you’ve got some electorates are bigger than most of Western Europe. I mean, Durack in Western Australia, for instance, is bigger than France and Spain combined. And how is that MP? And I can’t remember his or her name, but I mean, how are they realistically to travel around the state and get the views of their MP? I mean, it’s basically impossible. And so I think, yes.
So the situation is because they don’t increase the number of MPs, their number of staff has to increase. And quite often the staff collectively have paid more. So it’s not even necessarily cost-effective what’s occurring at the moment. If you had fewer MPs that wouldn’t need as many staff that wouldn’t need to be paid as much actually. And actually, smaller parties should be really into this because if you lowered, say, the quota in the Senate to get in, you’d have a wider variety of parties there.
Chris Smith:
Yeah. Melissa Price is the member for Durack.
Adam Creighton:
Okay. Good memory.
Chris Smith:
Just for the record. No, just for the record. Okay. So if we did do that, do you think it would have popular support? I doubt it.
Adam Creighton:
No. No, I don’t think it would sadly. I joked in my column, you don’t often get the IPA and the Australia Institute on the same page on policy, but we are on this. So I think it’s got some good arguments behind it then when you’ve got both left and right-wing think tanks in agreement. But the reality is people do, and quite rightly so, have a lot of contempt for the political class. I mean, I certainly have that view, but I think they’d have less if there were more MPs who were more in touch with their constituents and less part of the elite political class. But I do understand it’s hard for people to see that. But that said, I think it’s going to have to change. I mean, there’s been no increases in 1984, that’s a long time ago. And the population’s doubled, literally doubled since then. And the number of seats in the parliament has stayed the same.
Chris Smith:
There are a couple of compelling arguments with this, but I’ll leave it to our listeners to weigh in on the discussion. Would you like to see a higher representation in the parliament of the population, which is basically what Adam’s saying? And a doubling of the population since ’84, but the same number of MPs doesn’t sound like we’re keeping up with the need for Australians to have their voice heard. So give us a call on 131269. Robert Gottliebsen has written in The Australian next to you today as well saying, “The renewable plan is set to be the biggest financial disaster since federation.” At least some of us are under this, mate.
Adam Creighton:
Yes. Well, look, the IPA has certainly been out of this. You have as well, Chris, and many other sensible thinkers and commentators have realised that the economics and the science of rolling out so much wind and solar just doesn’t stack up. It’s never stacked up. And these emissions targets are simply not going to be achieved. And it is going to be extraordinary financial disaster. I mean, the estimates just around the transmission networks. I think Robert said it was pencilled in to cost about $8.5 billion to expand the transmission network, but it’s actually going to cost more like 120 when you factor in growth in costs and you have a realistic view of just how many new poles and lines are required. And there’s another thing too, people forget. There’s wind and solar stations already out there, of course, but all the best spots for wind and solar have already been taken. So every new lot you add is obviously going to be less effective, less efficient than the last one.
Chris Smith:
Inferior. Yeah.
Adam Creighton:
Yes. So basically, the quality or the performance of these units is actually relatively greatest now. It’s going to get worse unless there’s some new incredible breakthrough in technology. And I think the whole fuel crisis, I think, has shown people not that we really need to have more wind and solar, it’s just that the nation still runs on diesel, basically. And fossil fuels are very important.
Chris Smith:
It’s opened our eyes, especially to those in the city who don’t quite get it. It’s opened their eyes too, to the reality of diesel. You simply can’t run the country on anything but.
Adam Creighton:
Yes. No, that’s exactly right. Whether the right lessons are going to be learned, I know Chris Bowen’s out there touting the benefits of even faster rollout of wind and solar, that remains to be seen. But yeah, look, I think most people would probably now take a dim view of the solar, wind push, because they would’ve seen how useless it all was in this crisis.
Chris Smith:
Yep, yep. Very true. One last one, NDIS, a Labour Senator from Tasmania, Helen Polley, once the NDIS means tested. Now, I’m all for this. It should have been means tested right at the get go, but this doesn’t deal with the routing going on among shonky care providers. They’re not all shonky, of course, but we’ve seen some evidence recently of some shonks in certain Southwestern electorates of Sydney and parts of Melbourne. You’ve got to tackle both ends of the scenario here, don’t you?
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, certainly that’s true. I mean, there’s been some reduction in the growth rate. I just checked last night, actually, number of people on the NDIS. So it only went up by 10,000 recipients over the last quarter of last year, but it’s still 751,000 people are now on it. And that’s about double what was forecast back in 2011 when the thing was designed. So clearly, there are far too many people on it, and I would say the payments are too great as well.
And yes, it should be means tested. I mean, look, I mean, it’s 65 billion or … No, so it’s about 50 billion this year. It’s growing to 65 billion. It’s going to overtake Medicare. It’s going to overtake defence spending, but the reality is you’ve got to do more than just means test it because that might show $5, $10 billion off the cost over time, but you’ve still got to remove the various conditions that qualify for it, and that’s going to be politically very difficult.
Chris Smith:
Yeah, politically, especially in the hands of a Labour government at the moment.
Adam Creighton:
Yes.
Chris Smith:
That’s the last thing they want to do. Very true. Adam, great to catch up. Lots to talk about at the moment.
Adam Creighton:
Indeed. Thanks very much.
Chris Smith:
Our world is … Thank you very much, Adam. Appreciate it.
Adam Creighton:
Thank you. Thank you.
Chris Smith:
Adam Creighton, senior fellow and Chief Economist with the Institute of Public Affairs.
This transcript of Adam Creighton on Mornings with Chris Smith on 2SM from 10 April 2026 has been edited for clarity.
