In this interview, Daniel Wild appeared on Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research on migration.
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.
Rita Panahi:
Joining me now is the Institute of Public Affairs Deputy Executive Director, Daniel Wild and former Labour Senator Michael Danby. Daniel, where is the correction? Where is the apology from the ABC? Where is the clarification? I won’t even call it a correction, some sort of a clarification about, oh, maybe we didn’t provide all the context there.
Daniel Wild:
Well, don’t hold your breath, Rita. I don’t think one’s going to come funnily enough. And look, this is just another example of how the ABC has a complete and total inability to present matters and facts in an impartial, unbiased manner. And this is why their ratings are going down. It’s why Australians don’t trust the ABC anymore. We’ve seen it with COVID, we’ve seen it with the Voice to parliament, we’ve seen it with net-zero. They only ever present one side of the story. And I just think the reporting has gone downhill and clearly the ABC, which was once respected and once widely watched is just not the institution that it once was. It should apologise, but it’s not going to.
Rita Panahi:
Well, Michael, where’s the accountability? We saw the ABC also deliberately edit the president’s comments, those January 6th comments. That sort of behaviour led to resignations of the BBC, but the ABC hasn’t even been an apology from what I understand.
Michael Danby:
Rita, accountability is coming. You’re part of it. Sky’s ratings and the digital world is something that faces the old fogies of the ABC. Why can’t they apologise when they make a mistake? Why can’t that person from Four Corners who did all those dreadful programmes about Cardinal Pell admit that she was wrong when the high court came to its decision? Why can’t after Chris Kenny exposes Julian Stevens, can’t they say, “We got it wrong.” Why can’t Sarah Ferguson say that three part series that I did on Trump was… Trump directly-
Rita Panahi:
The Russian collusion hoax.
Michael Danby:
And we should apologise for it. That would give all of the other things that they do more credibility. But that would be balanced and not sort of the woke agenda.
Rita Panahi:
But in some ways, Dan, they don’t have that reckoning and accountability because they’re taxpayer funded. So they can ignore the market, they can ignore the audience plummeting, they can sort of not worry about any of that and just focus on activism as opposed to trying to serve their charter. And they do have a charter in place which sets them apart from other media organisations.
Daniel Wild:
Well, exactly. I mean, the charter is a part of getting public funding. It’s saying if we’re going to have a public broadcast and we can debate whether that’s appropriate or not, but if you’re going to have one, then they need to actually serve the public. Every single Australian taxpayer is forced to pay for the ABC. So the ABC should reflect the diverse views of the Australian community and plainly they are failing at that.
Rita Panahi:
They are massive. And I would struggle to name a single conservative presenter, host. I mean, even within just the ranks when you talk about the production teams, the entire editorial team, I mean, where are the conservatives? Where are the people representing around 50% of the population? Now, let’s move on to the number of temporary visa holders in Australia that has surged to a record 2.9 million. Home affairs figures show an increase of around 1.2 million since 2019. And these figures include more than 730,000 New Zealanders, Dan, and we also have more than 630,000 students in this country on these temporary visas.
Daniel Wild:
Well, our migration programme is a scam. It is a backdoor path to students and those on temporary visas to getting permanent residency. Mainstream Australians getting ripped off. They’re paying the price, whether it’s the congestion on our social services, the higher cost of housing and rents that are induced by this massive migration programme. Australians don’t want it. Even the age of the Sydney Warner Herald, these left-wing woke newspapers, published polling showing Australians want cuts to immigration. They want migrants to come here who are from similar countries, those who have English-speaking backgrounds and have similar institutional understanding of the Australian way of life and Australian values. Australians have had an absolute gut full of this open slather, uncontrolled mass migration programme. It’s enriching universities. It’s enriching big corporates. The government loves it because it brings in revenue. Everybody benefits other than the millions and millions of mainstream Australians who are paying the price.
Rita Panahi:
Well, Michael, the Home Affairs data also shows that of these 2.9 million temporary visa holders, only 238,000 are temporary skilled workers and 360,000 are tourists. And I think those figures would surprise a lot of people because we keep being told this line about we need to have this mass number coming in every year.
Michael Danby:
The legit people that are here out of the 2.9 million. So you’ve got two million people here. Now, it’s not as Raf Epstein who Andrew Bolt exposed the other day, says that you’re racist because you’re against migration. It’s because people have legitimate differences over the level of migration. Can’t you get back to the issues, Raf? So start being an adult and not… That’s why your ratings have crashed to under 4% on morning radio.
Rita Panahi:
Under four. Wow.
Michael Danby:
Or maybe it’s 4.2. I’m sorry. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. But the point is that you’re wiping out, as Daniel said, the legitimate concerns of people, even high immigration people in the past like me think it was too high. And particularly the scam of international students who are in the business model of the universities, it’s ridiculous. They’re all doing many of them, fake degrees, can’t speak English, don’t actually go to the course, and you’re using it as a pathway to citizenship.
Rita Panahi:
Why are both political parties, Michael, hooked on this big Australia philosophy? Because yes, at the last election, the coalition had a lower target, but it was still pretty high. When you look at the overall figures, it was not significantly different to what Labour were proposing.
Michael Danby:
Well, I think it’s because both political parties are afraid that some of the ethnic communities will say that they are being racist by trying to depress the immigration figures and also because of a nostalgia for the fact that immigration worked in the past. So just have to adjust this. Be adults, refocus the whole scheme, make it less. I particularly think for the liberals to say that they should have less immigration, but not take into account the international students is a big mistake. The universities are terrible places these days. They’re just businesses that don’t actually provide higher education for students. They’re just generating income for these awful middle level bureaucrats who want high incomes, some of them more than the prime minister out of international student fees.
Rita Panahi:
Dan, is it that nostalgia or are they hooked on the sugar hit to the GDP figures, not the per capita figures, but the overall figures? And this notion that existing migrants are going to be aghast if you cut migration, I think if you did a deep dive into that, you’d find that no, many migrants are as concerned about the influx of people as anyone who was born and bred here.
Daniel Wild:
Well, that’s right. I mean, there’s the issues that Michael has credibly identified in terms of why they don’t go for it. The other thing is you’re right, inflates GDP, you have more people spending more money in a bigger market. Your headline GDP is bigger. So it sounds good, but as you say, the per capita is actually going backwards. Don’t forget, the other thing is big business are a major lobby because it suppresses wages and it means that they don’t have to train Australians for the job. So they’re basically getting a bottom line benefit. Your point about migrants being concerned about it, if you explain it to them as what will their lives of their children be like, they understand that. The thing that recent migrants are concerned about is you’re going to stop their parents coming in through the family visa thing. That’s where the scare campaign comes in. So that’s what you have to manage politically.
Rita Panahi:
That is true. And we saw the fallout when Senator Price, Cicina Price just made a comment really repeating what a Labour pollster had said about the voting patterns of the Indian community and the hysterical reaction to that, Michael, was quite telling.
Michael Danby:
Very malevolent Penny Wong is then able to broadcast some comment made by a Liberal senator just before the election onto Wabo and scare the people in individual electorates. It’s sort of the weaponizing of reverse racism that is terrible. It’s just like what the Mean Girls did with-
Rita Panahi:
Linda Reynolds. Yeah.
Michael Danby:
Linda Reynolds, Kimberly Kitchen and the Hole Higgins case. They’re ruthless, Stalinist.
Rita Panahi:
But they’re good at it. You know what? It’s an adversarial game politics and I think the coalition need to appreciate that and actually start turning up to the fight. Now, there are calls for an overhaul of family travel entitlements for federal politicians after it was revealed Senator Sarah Hansen Young slugged taxpayers almost $3,000 for flights and accommodation to attend a Byron Bay Music Festival with a relative. Adam Hansen Young also met with stakeholders and small businesses within the festival sector. So she did have work commitments, but that means the travel is within the guidelines. But again, it’s, as they say, does it meet the pub test? Does it pass the pub test?
Daniel Wild:
Well, no, it doesn’t. And I’m not opposed to having family reunion entitlements for MPs. I think it’s important to encourage… One of the hard parts about being an MP is time away from family. I don’t oppose the concept of it, but they’re taking the mickey. I mean, going to a music festival… Yeah, go too far. Going to a corporate box to watch the footy. I mean, there are more sensible ways of applying this. And the problem is that I suspect most MPs use this in a sensible way, but people like Anika Wells and Sarah Hanson Young. By the way, these are the social justice activists who say that the top in the town’s getting too much. Well, they’re the ones that are ripping everybody else off and they’re ruining it for the people that do the right thing.
Rita Panahi:
Well, Michael, but that would argue it’s all within the guidelines. So they’ve done nothing wrong. It’s an argument Anika Wells has made, and then the prime minister and the treasure happened.
Michael Danby:
Well, we’ll see about that. Leaving a comp car outside the tennis for 10 hours is, I think, not just beyond the spirit, but it may be beyond the law of this, and she’ll have to pay that back, hopefully. Similarly, going for a feed in Paris for $1,700 with some staff.
Rita Panahi:
Croissants are expensive, Michael.
Michael Danby:
Absolutely pathetic. And Maureen Farooqi, you shouldn’t forget her. She flew to the disruptive rallies here in Melbourne three or four times with using the family reunion thing too. So some of this is bodgy and should be submitted to the-
Rita Panahi:
Perhaps the guidelines need to be looked at because if all those examples you’ve mentioned are within the guidelines, perhaps it’s the guidelines that need to be looked at. Anika Wells has referred herself to the independent parliamentary expenses authority for an audit. Her spending spree, Dan, was incredible. I mean, first heard about the $30,000 plus per person that was spent just on airfares to New York. I don’t know who booked that. Then we’ve got the birthday party in Adelaide that just seemed to happily coincide with some meetings she had planned, the family skiing trip that the taxpayer was paying for. And as Michael said, having a Comcar waiting outside the tennis, waiting outside the NRL grand final for hours for her to watch-
Michael Danby:
You could send it away and get it to come back.
Rita Panahi:
Well, yeah, it seems to just be this sense of entitlement that I think people are going to find really quite disgusting at any time, let alone during a cost of living crisis.
Daniel Wild:
Well, that’s right. I think what’s going to happen with this referral though is they’ll find that it’s within the guidelines, or there might be one or two that are outside of it. So she’s kicked it into there to stop the media storm. You’re right, most of this is within the guidelines. That’s what this review is going to find. And she knows that. That’s why she’s doing it. But the problem, as you say, is the guidelines. What happens is they go, “I want to go to the Melbourne Cup on a Tuesday, therefore I’ll book a work meeting in on Monday.”
Rita Panahi:
It’s not hard. And that’s why I think Anika Wells really faulted quite spectacularly during that interview on Sky News on Sunday morning when she was asked about, when did you know about this birthday party? What came first, the birthday party?
Michael Danby:
Andrew Clinell. It was devastating.
Rita Panahi:
Andrew Clinell absolutely… Yeah, that was a big mistake for her to go and be interviewed by Andrew Clinell. She should have stuck to the ABC because he absolutely exposed her and she had nowhere to hide. Dan Wild, Michael Danby, thank you so much for your time.
This transcript with Daniel Wild talking on Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia from 10 December 2025 has been edited for clarity.
