Sharri Markson:
Welcome back. Well, The Daily Telegraph has revealed that taxpayers have paid a staggering $11 million in travel bills for Labour ministers over the past financial year. And topping the jet sitting list was the prime minister who alone spent more than $4 million in the past year alone. While Richard Marles and Penny Wong charged taxpayers a combined $3 million. Well, to discuss, let’s bring in tonight’s Panel News 24 contributor, Joe Hildebrand and chief economist for the Institute of Public Affairs, Adam Creighton. Great to see you guys.
Joe Hildebrand:
Great to be here. Hello.
Sharri Markson:
I mean, Adam, I’ve just had a former SAS soldier on my show. They’re cutting services for veterans, but the prime minister is literally spending millions of dollars on travel.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Look, it’s certainly excessive by any objective standard. But the reality is, I’d be surprised if coalition MPs say too much about this because they would be just as bad. The reality is the ministerial jobs are a gravy train. You can have many staff, huge salaries, first class travel. They all do this. I think these stories are very useful though, but they do remind voters of just the huge cost of executive government, that when they create new jobs or new ministries or new bodies, that it comes with all of these associated costs and it adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars. So I think it’s a great story.
Sharri Markson:
Look, I don’t have the figures at hand to compare whether the coalition spent more or less. But Joe, the point is we are currently in a cost of living crisis. There is high inflation. Interest rates are rising. Rents are rising. There’s a housing shortage. And people see that the prime minister has spent $3 million on travel.
Joe Hildebrand:
That is exactly the point. I mean, it’s obviously the sort of travel that politicians have to do, and they do have to do it. A foreign minister has to make foreign visits. They’re always going to seem astronomical no matter what the figure is.
Sharri Markson:
Not all of the trips they would have to do.
Joe Hildebrand:
But again, it is when other people are suffering and when… I mean, a rising tide floats all boats. So if everyone feels like they’re secure financially, that they’re doing okay, they’re not stressing about the future, they’re prepared to, yes, it’s a bit outrageous and yes, it makes a great splash, but it’s not as fatal or damaging for a government as when it looks like everyone else is starving and they’re basically out there globe-trotting around the planet and saying, “Let the meat cake.” And I think that is a real problem.
I think the other problem for the government’s own sake is that politicians live a life that is very, very insulated from the everyday cost of living pressures.
Sharri Markson:
That’s very privileged.
Joe Hildebrand:
That’s right, that every day people feel. So I’m not sure if a lot of people in the government are picking up on the raw anxiety, and in some cases, just sheer rage that I am hearing from ordinary people every day.
Sharri Markson:
I do think their travel is excessive, just to disagree with you on that one point. I mean, we’ve seen examples of trips where families have been taken with business class flights. It ended up being a holiday. There might’ve been one meeting. So I think it has been excessive-
Joe Hildebrand:
That’s right.
Sharri Markson:
… and unreasonable in many cases with many ministers, but yeah.
All right. Well, let’s have a look at indigenous leader Marcia Langton. She took aim at the pro-Palestinian movement while giving evidence at the Royal Commission into antisemitism today.
Marcia Langton:
There can be no peace if the pro-Palestine movement make enemies of Jewish people in our country. We have to be united for peace.
Sharri Markson:
Yeah. She also spoke about how she was targeted personally called as Zio when she spoke out for Australian Jews. And she even had her property, her car window smashed. I mean, Adam, no one should be subject to this sort of-
Adam Creighton:
No.
Sharri Markson:
… violence and abuse and simply for standing up for Australians, for fellow Australians.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. Look, the viciousness of it just shocks me. And generally speaking, Marcia Langton would be on the side of these people politically. I mean, she’d generally be perceived as a left-wing academic. I actually respect her a great deal. I think she’s a great academic. Of course, we don’t see to eye on many things, but it’s just shocking that she’s being treated this way. So just very unfortunate turn of events.
Sharri Markson:
I mean, Joe, the Palestinian movement often tries to draw parallels with Gaza, but actually, Jews were indigenous to the land and it is something that Marcia Langton, Nova Paris and others recognise.
Joe Hildebrand:
Yeah. They’ve been really strong on that. It’s been really impressive. And to be honest, if the pro-Palestinian lobby or the anti-Israel lobbyist, it’s more accurately called, want to pull back the rug of history, why don’t they campaign to give it back to the Carnanites who the Jews took it off when they crossed the Red Sea under Moses and went to the Promised Land? I mean, this kind of cherry picking of history is absolutely idiotic. And I think it shows how disingenuous the pro-Palestinian cause is. It is simply the cause du jour. It is this generation’s Vietnam. And so they’re just going to pick it up. They’re going to get hysterical about it. And the hatred that she’s received and the hatred I know the left can dole out to people who should or would otherwise be sympathetic to a lot of those things. I mean, it’s self-harmful in the first place, and it’s why everyone else calls me a lefty. I’m embarrassed to call myself a lefty because of people like that doing things like that and attacking anyone who deviates from what I think-
Sharri Markson:
But you’re Centre Right Labour. You’re in the mode-
Joe Hildebrand:
Yeah, absolutely.
Sharri Markson:
… of Chris Minns.
Joe Hildebrand:
Yeah, exactly.
Sharri Markson:
Probably Kevin Rudd was in a similar position.
Joe Hildebrand:
Kevin Rudd’s actually more to the left these days, believe it or not.
Sharri Markson:
More to the left. All right, let’s not go back into all of that.
Joe Hildebrand:
But I won’t bore you with the infinite sign [inaudible 00:05:45] politics of internal labour factional warfare.
Sharri Markson:
All right. Well, speaking of Chris Minns, actually, he happened to back in Pauline Hanson today. Now, this is over the whole political fight over the black market for illegal cigarettes. And Hanson has promised to cut the tobacco excise by 75%. Have a look at Minns.
Chris Minns:
Well, to be honest with you, I’ve been calling for the same thing for about a year. So it’d be pretty disingenuous to come on after One Nation agreed with that policy and say they’re wrong. So I’m not going to say that.
Sharri Markson:
Yeah, he has. Before Pauline Hanson, he was saying the tobacco excise needs to be cut because it was leading to this escalating crime, organised crime, fire bombing of tobacco stores across New South Wales, the same issues in Victoria. Well, now the coalition is also reportedly considering reducing the tax just to up Pauline by 80%. And this has annoyed Barnaby Joyce.
Barnaby Joyce:
I’m just going to give them the roadmap to the One Nation party room meetings. I think it’s better. And now we’re saying we’re going to produce tobacco excise, and sure enough, out they charge. We’re going to do it too.
Sharri Markson:
Adam, Barnaby isn’t wrong here. Is he? It does seem like One Nation is setting policy for the coalition.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, look, they certainly are, whether it’s superannuation or it’s his excise. I mean, they’re completely right in the recommendation. This is one of the greatest public policy disasters of Australian history, maybe in the world, in the developed world. I mean, we’ve lost $16 billion a year of federal revenue and smoking rates have gone up significantly. Just walk around the streets of Sydney and Melbourne. People are smoking all the time now. It’s very concerning. So there’s been a massive hit to health. There’s been a massive hit to the federal budget. And yet the government refuses to acknowledge just the most basic economics that if you basically have a prohibition, just like the US did between 1920 and 1933, led to all the gangs, all the crimes, all the murders. And then eventually they realised that banning alcohol did not work. But the tax rates here are so high, it’s basically prohibition. That’s what’s happened.
So exactly the same forces here at work and they’re going to have to cut them. It’s all reward to say, oh, we’re just going to police it more. But that just doesn’t work. There are finite resources and they can’t do it. They’re going to have to cut them.
Sharri Markson:
I actually very rarely see anyone smoking a cigarette. Everyone seems to be vaping.
Joe Hildebrand:
Everyone’s vaping. Yeah.
Sharri Markson:
Everywhere’s vaping. It’s really annoying. And surely that’s not any better for your health. Let’s not get sidetracked down that. I’m sure I’m going to get a flood of emails now. But Joe, this is an unlikely policy alliance between Pauline Hanson and Chris Minns.
Joe Hildebrand:
Well, again, this is why I love Chris Mins, because he’s honest. He doesn’t take cheap political potshots just because he can, and he says things like that. I mean, it’s impossible to imagine almost any other politician saying, “I’m not going to pretend that we disagree on this because I have called for this as well. So I’m not going to criticise him.” And that is why people like him. And I don’t know why it is so difficult for other politicians and political leaders to see that that is the silver bullet. If they want to take on One Nation, it’s not by jumping up and down and pointing the finger at them. It’s by being reasonable. And so people don’t think they’re being gaslit by crazy arguments.
Sharri Markson:
It’s actually being authentic.
Joe Hildebrand:
And being authentic.
Sharri Markson:
Minns is authentic. Pauline’s authentic.
Joe Hildebrand:
That’s exactly right. People can relate to that. I listen to him say something like that and I think that is someone I can trust. That is someone I can trust to be reasonable. That is someone who appears to be honest, which is as rare as hen’s teeth in politics.
Sharri Markson:
You’re going to say the same things about Pauline Hanson? She’s honest. She’s authentic.
Joe Hildebrand:
Yeah. Again, I’ve always said that just calling Pauline Hanson names or pointing the finger at her; I mean, I know Pauline Hanson, I’ve met her, I’ve talked to her; is absolutely the wrong way to go. What you’ve got to do is be real. And again, as I was going to say exact same thing that Adam Creighton did about the prohibition in the lead up to and after the Great Depression. I mean, why on earth you would not learn that lesson of history is beyond me. I would go back even, Adam, to the Emperor Tiberius who was told that he could squeeze as much taxi out of his citizens [inaudible 00:09:48]. The reality is that-
Sharri Markson:
Hold on, hold on, hold on. We still have a prohibition on illicit drugs and that does work. So some prohibitions are necessary.
Joe Hildebrand:
I don’t think it does work, Sharri.
Adam Creighton:
Well, I don’t think it works at all.
Sharri Markson:
I think it does. Apart from the sport stars embroide it in all these scandals tonight, I think it modestly-
Joe Hildebrand:
It doesn’t work if you’re prohibiting something that already is at scale. So if you have something that someone is already doing of… And this is again why the policing of doesn’t work. If you’ve got a whole bunch of people who desperately want to vape as a means of quitting smoking or want to smoke because they’re addicted, just saying don’t do it and punishing them or trying to catch them when they do is never going to work. I mean, again, it’s the same with the last budget. So, oh, we’re just going to make negative hearing go away by saying, no, you can’t do that anymore and think that everyone’s just going to cow towel and the economy’s just going to miraculously dance to that new tune.
Adam Creighton:
And it’s all very-
Sharri Markson:
Very quickly, Adam. We’ve got to go.
Adam Creighton:
You have to go. Okay. It’s all very well for bureaucrats to say to stop it, but the police have to take on these gangs with $5 billion-
Sharri Markson:
Exactly.
Adam Creighton:
… of cash and they will physically hurt the police.
Sharri Markson:
I know. They’re just crime in the streets.
Adam Creighton:
So it’s very hard to fix this problem.
Sharri Markson:
Crime in the streets, difficult for police. Adam Creighton, Joe Hildebrand, great to see you.
Adam Creighton:
Thanks, Sharri. Good to see you.
This transcript of Adam Creighton on Sharri – News24 from 19 August 2026 has been edited for clarity.
