Rita Panahi:
Let’s bring in News Corp senior writer Patrick Carlyon and Institute of Public Affairs research fellow Colleen Harkin. Patrick, I’ll start with you. Trades Hall boss Luke Hilakari will share this data with unions on Tuesday in what is expected to be a push for them to campaign harder for Labour. Trades Hall won’t be happy about the results of this report. They’ve commissioned this research, and it shows even in the most left-wing state in the country, One Nation is ahead of Labour.
Patrick Carlyon:
Victoria’s going to serve the role of guinea pig for the rest of the country when it comes to the One Nation rise. The election is in November. It is a three-horse race. And if you talk to the pollsters, they’re saying that seats could flip according to one or 2% changes in the primary vote.
And Labour is on the nose. That makes it totally different to the rest of the country. I think Victoria passed the milestone of one million potholes the other day.
Rita Panahi:
Oh, wow.
Patrick Carlyon:
Yes. I mean, that’s what we do here.
Rita Panahi:
The pothole capital, forget about the sporting capital. It’s just new honours we’ve been bestowed with every day, Colleen. It’s wonderful.
Now, this follows a Roy Morgan poll that was released yesterday showing that One Nation leads federally. There was talk yesterday because I think there was a Resolve poll showing One Nation had dropped back. Roy Morgan poll showed the opposite, and I think people are desperate. People in the Coalition and Labour are desperate to cling to any data that shows there may be a bursting of the bubble for One Nation. That doesn’t seem to be happening, Colleen.
Colleen Harkin:
No. Look, I think that the polls will bounce around. I mean, the federal election is actually not due for another two years. Victoria is the one to watch from an indicative point of view. But the fact that those statistics exist at all is astounding. And the three-horse race component in the Victorian election, I do think it’ll be very, very close.
People are looking for an alternative. They’re looking for some hardcore action to fix what is wrong with the state, and everybody knows there’s a lot that needs to be addressed. It will be interesting, though, because One Nation haven’t announced their team yet, and-
Rita Panahi:
But they don’t even have a leader. To me, it’s astounding that they are leading in this state when they actually don’t have a leader. They don’t have a voice here. Pauline Hanson, I guess, is the leader.
Colleen Harkin:
But I think that shows you the sentiment of people, that they are really looking for something. They’re not voting on it. They’re voting on the vibe at the moment.
Rita Panahi:
And I think, in a way, it really is an indictment on the Vic Libs too, Patrick, because they do have a leader. They’ve got a team. They’ve been in opposition for a long time.
Patrick Carlyon:
Yes.
Rita Panahi:
And to have a party with a federal leader from Queensland with really very little local presence leading them and leading Labour, they’ve got to look at how they’re going about things.
Patrick Carlyon:
Absolutely. Look, it is a three-horse race, and it is very difficult to predict what will happen. Nobody really knows what will happen. And I think what we can feel assured of is that One Nation will get a lot of seats, and it will become a test case for how the nation votes federally down the track.
There’ll be 18 months or more where One Nation will actually get to wield a bit of power one way or another. And that will be fascinating to see for the rest of the nation, what happens in Victoria.
Rita Panahi:
Absolutely. Now, opposition leader Angus Taylor was on 2GB this morning defending his criticism of One Nation. Have a listen.
Angus Taylor:
I say what I say about One Nation with a heavy heart, frankly. I say it with a heavy heart. When you add up even some of their policies, you get to the kind of spending that will create a debt crisis in this country. Now, why does that matter? Because it drives up inflation, it drives up interest rates, and it makes people poorer.
Rita Panahi:
Colleen, Angus Taylor is quick to point out that his main focus is Labour. Most of his criticism is aimed at Labour, but it is any criticism of One Nation that’s going to get the headlines. Is that ill-advised? Is that really going to bring back those Liberal voters who’ve left the fold?
Colleen Harkin:
I think it’s terribly ill-advised from the Liberal Party because there is so many disaffected Liberals that they can win back if they play their cards right, and dissing One Nation is not going to do it.
The dissatisfied Liberal is looking for the Liberal Party to find its spine again. And they’ve moved over to the “new boyfriend” sort of thing, and they’re waiting to see whether it’ll stick or not. So I think being seen to see One Nation as their enemy is not good politics for them. They should be focused on Labour, and the rest of it will work out in the wash if they focus directly on where their enemy is.
Rita Panahi:
And Patrick, it shouldn’t be too hard. They would know what the key issues are, why One Nation is resonating with so many people. And if they did find their spine, if they were clear in their policy positions and they weren’t this broad church that’s all things to everybody, they probably would be in a much better position. And I think just undermining One Nation isn’t going to get them there.
Patrick Carlyon:
And it tends to undermine the people who have shifted to One Nation, doesn’t it? I mean, look, nobody’s listening to Angus Taylor and the Liberals at the moment. They don’t have a constituency, or certainly nothing like they did.
And the point is, nobody shifted to One Nation because of One Nation’s policies. They’ve shifted because Pauline has put up a hand and said, “I hear your grievances. I hear that you feel left behind.” And I think Angus Taylor should be concentrating on trying to tell the people, “Look, we hear you. We know what’s going on here. We understand your problems with the cost of living and everything else.”
And this doesn’t do that. It just actually undermines those people who have moved towards One Nation.
Rita Panahi:
Now, The Daily Telegraph is reporting house prices across metropolitan Sydney are plummeting despite the Prime Minister promising his housing tax reforms would not see prices go backwards. The latest house price mapping shows prices dropped by as much as 9% in some Sydney suburbs.
Colleen, this is terrible news. I know some people see falling house prices and think, “Oh, well, that’s fantastic.” But for the majority of Australians, their home is their biggest asset. And to have that go backwards, particularly when they have a mortgage, it’s disaster.
Colleen Harkin:
Well, 9% decrease is extraordinary to fall in that period of time. Look, everybody wants the house prices to fall until you’ve got one, and then you want them to stabilise and slowly increment.
But this is a factor of a very poorly received budget where it is still rolling out the effects of it and the lack of consumer confidence. So it all works towards a very poor scenario. And it’s not that the first-home buyers are buying into the market either; there’s just this stagnation. The auction clearance rates are very low, like nationally 47, 48%, which is extraordinary.
Rita Panahi:
As a volume as well.
Colleen Harkin:
Correct.
Rita Panahi:
So it just shows you that there’s just complete lack of confidence right now in bricks and mortar, which is normally the safest form of investment, the most conservative form of investment.
Now, residential property investors are beginning to switch strategies and focus on new housing estates. First-home buyers currently have a strong foothold in the new-build market, making up over 40% of total purchases compared to local investors who are just under 20%. Analysis by The Australian newspaper shows that buying a median-priced established property today leaves an investor more than $700 a week out of pocket, whereas a new build puts them behind by less than $215 a week after tax.
Patrick, this is the law of unintended consequences. Again, these policies we were told by the Albanese government were designed to help first-home buyers, and it’s hurting them. Now they’re competing with investors who used to leave those home-and-land packages alone in the past, but no more.
Patrick Carlyon:
That’s right. Well, where are investors going to go otherwise? I mean, they can’t buy established properties. They can’t throw it into the stock market. They’re going to get smashed in every which way. The only safe haven is new builds. And that was a pretty good place for first-home buyers to try and sort of get into the market. You’re going to have investors absolutely swarming this sector, this part of the property market. It’s not going to work for first-home buyers.
Rita Panahi:
No. That was one area where less than one in five was going to investors. They were buying those properties, and it is often a great first step into the property market. It may not be in an area you want to be in forever, but it gets you an entry into the property market. And Colleen, now I think it’s going to be a lot more difficult if this starter, and if this trend, continues.
Colleen Harkin:
Yeah. And it’s also usually at a price point where a first-home buyer can compete. They can actually get into the market. And so it’s a great first step. But now if they’re competing, you said unintended consequences. I’m never sure about this, whether they actually intend this or not. Because if you did the homework, you would know that this is going to happen.
Rita Panahi:
That’s true.
Colleen Harkin:
And I’m just never really sure about how they could have made such drastic decisions that change the market so substantially and not have considered them properly.
Rita Panahi:
And the same could be said about the increases we’re seeing in rents, that was completely predictable. In fact, we’ve seen it before in this country the last time they fiddled with negative gearing. We’ve seen it recently in New Zealand. They knew it was going to happen, and yet they’ve gone down that road.
Now, Treasurer Jim Charmers has been warned that the proposed capital gains tax exemption for startups has too many hurdles for most innovative companies to qualify. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has argued that the government’s exemption focuses too much on tech and ignores innovation in other sectors like mining exploration, advanced manufacturing, agribusiness, and health services.
Colleen, again, a red-hot mess here, just on multiple fronts. They’ve tried to do little fixes here and there, and it just exposes again how ill-considered this entire strategy is.
Colleen Harkin:
Yeah. And this is two months after the budget was handed down, and we’re still talking about it, and they’re still trying to tweak it. Look, the bottom line here is: if you can’t keep what you create, there’s no incentive to innovate.
And startup companies take large risks and take a long time to see the return on in their investment. So they need to be rewarded for that. They need to feel that the risks that they’re taking, at some stage they will get the benefit of it. And all this is doing is making it much more difficult, and it will go offshore.
Rita Panahi:
That is so right. I know personally of so many young people who are looking to move to Singapore, move to Dubai because the tax environment, the business environment there is just so much better, Patrick. So why not? If you don’t have things keeping you in this country, particularly if you’re younger and you don’t have kids at school here, you can just get up and leave.
Patrick Carlyon:
Why do you want to take a big risk? And then if it pays off, give 30 to 50% of it to the government, who did nothing?
Rita Panahi:
And if it doesn’t pay off, you’re done. You probably lost your house or whatever else you had.
Patrick Carlyon:
This is anti-aspiration, isn’t it? I mean, it is stymieing creativity and innovation in a way that the nation really cannot afford. I don’t imagine they set out to do that, but it’s like this whole budget, it was done on the back of a serviette, almost. And they kept changing the serviette and updating it.
Rita Panahi:
That, but it’s also a deeply ideological budget, which makes me think it shouldn’t be shocking them, because this is the socialist left faction of Labour which runs that party right now. This is just what they love. This is the ideology.
Now, before you go, there’s been a shocking development in the murder case of former UK Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe. Counter-terrorism police officers are now leading the investigation into the suspected murder due to new information and evidence. The 28-year-old British man taken into custody has been rearrested on suspicion of commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism.
Colleen, we spoke about this yesterday. British police were saying there was no political motivation here. I said last night on this programme it was far too premature to come to that conclusion, and now they’ve already got egg on their face. How could they be so bold in coming out and declaring, “This isn’t terrorism, this isn’t domestic terrorism, there’s no political motivation,” so quickly? They seem to be so eager to stop the public speculating about this.
Colleen Harkin:
Yeah. They really don’t want people to have that conversation, do they? I mean, any investigation will evolve over a period of time, and new evidence will come about, but that’s exactly to your point. At that stage, they should say, “We’re keeping an open mind,” because public confidence in what they’re doing is hugely important.
And if they’re so fast to come out and just dismiss what most people are very concerned about, it undermines the public confidence. They’re very quick to shut down conversations that they don’t want people to have.
Rita Panahi:
And always conversations in the one direction. This is the most politically correct police force in the world.
Patrick Carlyon, Colleen Harkin, thank you so much for your time.
This transcript of Colleen Harkin speaking on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia from 14 July 2026 has been edited for clarity.
