Peta Credlin:
All right, let’s get into a whole lot of issues. We’ll get into that policy too. Let’s bring in my panel national affairs editor of the Daily Telegraph News24 host, of course, James Morrow, and the Deputy Executive Director at the IPA, Dan Wild. Plenty to pick through Dan. I know you’re a bit of a boffin on migration, and I went to your research to make it clear that Australians want wholesale change. They don’t want this tweaking around the edges. It’s interesting, Labour spruiking 225,000. For people at home, that’s double where we were in terms of the Howard government long-term average of about 110,000. 292, 292,000 is the current set of numbers. I doubt we’ll get off that. And they’ve got the tweaking in terms of say the working holidaymaker programme and others, they’re places that they shouldn’t go, right? There’s a whole lot of areas, Dan, that they left off the table today. What did you make of the policy?
Daniel Wild:
Well, it’s a shocker. This speech was a big middle finger to Australians who have been demanding cuts to the intake. And as you correctly identified, there are no cuts here beyond what was established in the government’s budget. So this government is not going to be reducing the net overseas migration number, which is the thing that they must do. You correctly said that this was nothing more than smoke and mirrors tinkering around the edges. And I think what is clear is that Tony Burke is in denial. He explicitly said that his government is not running a mass migration programme. This is complete bumpkin. What do you call having the single highest share of foreign born people in your country? Okay, that is mass migration. What do you call having one of the fastest growing migrant populations in the developed world? That is mass migration. What do you call having year after year of net overseas migration that is double, triple, or quadruple the long run average?
That is mass migration. That is what Australians are saying that we must stop. We look at it from an economic perspective where Tony Burke said, “If you cut immigration, you’re going to trash the economy.” This is just a trope that is run by the big business lobby groups and their mouthpieces and the university sector because they want more money. They want to take the lazy approach of more migrants rather than actually doing the hard yards of fixing up their own businesses and industries. So there was nothing in this speech at all for Australians who were demanding cuts and to fix our economy and our society, but it was just more insider political gain. So you’re not going to see anything more from this government on that.
Peta Credlin:
You’re so true to point out the business self-interest here because if you look at the countries ahead of us in the OACD and you look at their migration rates, a hell of a lot lower than Australia. So it doesn’t just deliver the productivity or the business outcomes that they claim they do. It masks heavy spending in the budget. It gives a false growth inflater to the underlying federal budget numbers. And James, I though of you when he had a real go at the whole melting pot analogy. And of course that’s the American analogy. And say what you like about the United States. And they are a big multiethnic, multiracial country, but they are not a multicultural country. The United States knows who they are, they know their flag, they know their anthem, and they are patriotic broadly in a way that we are not.
James Morrow:
Yeah. And that’s a really interesting thing, Peta. I had the exact same reaction to that speech and I thought really just from word one, he was gaslighting everybody about the nature of Australian immigration, Australian culture and his plans to fix it. But what you say about American patriotism is really worthwhile. America has a very thick, is I think the word you’d use for it, a thick identity, sense of itself, who Americans are, what America is, what the American dream is, what all of these things are about.
And I think under Labour, we have really seen an attempt to consciously or unconsciously really make the Australian identity much thinner. So you only hear just about a few sort of very top level things. Oh, well, rule of law, this, that, the other thing, a fair ago. Just a few very high level broad concepts, but then no talk about Australian achievements, about what Australia has done, what modern Australia has done to create this incredibly successful prosperous democracy. And a final point on America too, America, some experts think is actually now at a point of negative migration and yet their economy is booming. This idea that you need migrants to keep your economy turning over, it’s only true if you’ve hollowed out all of your industry and your ability to do anything else.
Peta Credlin:
And of course, if you don’t have an identity, if you lose your history, if you fall victim to revisionism about your history, you end up with students on the street like we saw again today in Melbourne and Sydney and ignorance on display. Scenes like this. Have a look.
Jules Arpula:
You can’t just look at it in terms of Victoria. Yeah. One secret harbour power, they’ve been building and building a vitriolic, hard, far right racist base.
Protester 1:
I hope you know damn well that this protest isn’t just against Pauline Hanson and One Nation. It’s against the entire (beep) political establishment.
Protester 2:
Pauline Hanson’s politics are actually so toxic. She’s for racism and bigotry.
Peta Credlin:
Well, Dan, what do you think?
Daniel Wild:
I think it’s a shame that so many young people have been brainwashed. I don’t have a problem with people getting out there and protesting and saying what they want. That’s a part of the parcel of living in a great country like ours. But a lot of the things they say are just factually untrue. I reckon if any of those individuals there who were saying that Pauline Hanson is racist and that she’s doing all these other things, I mean, could they name it? What precisely is it? It may be that they disagree with her, they disagree with her migration. Fine, you can disagree with it. But again, it gets back to our education system, the fact that the national curriculum is completely broken, and I don’t blame the teachers. It’s a system that is set up to fail because we have these cross-curriculum priorities that you know about, which is, you have climate change inserted into everything, you have all this other nonsense that’s put into every single subject.
So unfortunately, children are just not being taught the truth about Australia or about our history. And so they go on the streets, they say all of this stuff. I don’t have a problem with the kids. I just feel sorry for them, I’ve got to be honest, because they are victims of a broken system.
Peta Credlin:
Yeah. Well, I want parents to take a bit of responsibility too. If you saw your kids on TV sprouting nonsense, I’d coat hanger them home and put them in front of a book or something and educate them a bit before you send them back to school because clearly it’s not happening at school. Just quickly, if I can, James, a really big win today for veterans, but why do they have to fight for 18 weeks? The government sort of puts it down to consultation. Well, they were locking in this cap every single day in the parliament defending it to the death and now they’re forced to roll over. Of course, they’ve done it on the day of the big migration announcement, hoping it’ll be washed away in the media tomorrow. I tell you what, the veterans will not forget this though.
James Morrow:
No, they will not. And I don’t think Australians will forget this. I mean, yeah, this is only the latest in what’s probably been about a half a dozen budget back flips, but this was one of the most defensive things in that budget. I mean, this idea treating veterans as if they are sort of almost de facto, trying to game a system, it’s just appalling. And I think there’s a real national security implication in this too, because if you’re telling people you want them to sign up to serve the country, put their bodies and lives on the line, you can’t then say, when you come out the other side, we’re not going to be there for you. I just think it’s a disgrace. I think at the next reshuffle, I reckon Matt Keogh might be moving offices.
Peta Credlin:
Yeah, he’ll be survived and moved on though because the prime minister doesn’t get to choose his ministers. The factions do. That’s why Keogh is still there. They’ll just move into another portfolio like they did with Clare O’Neil. Just quickly, if I can, Dan, I know you used to live in Victoria, you’re a lucky escapee. The Royal Commission kicks off next week, the one that Labour was forced into calling when they changed the leader. Really what’s interesting here, CFMEU is the only union named in the terms of reference, but there’s a whole lot of other unions, the plumbers, ETU, Workers Union, they are all on the job for the big build. So they are now not involved with this Royal Commission. And do you really think this side of an election will see Dan Andrews or Jacinta Allan in the dark?
Daniel Wild:
Well, you got Buckley’s chance of that happening, but you’re right to point it out because that is really the test of whether this is fair dinkum or not. And I’ll tell you what else, Anthony Albanese needs to be there because his government has put money into this. Does he know about this? Did he know about the corruption?
Peta Credlin:
Good point.
Daniel Wild:
So this is not just a state issue and it’s not just a state issue for two reasons. One is as Victoria’s economy goes down, it’ll drag the rest of Australia down with it because it’s a big economy and it gets a lot of GST redistribution. The second point is that the money going in is not just state money, it is federal money as well. So someone from the federal government, it should be Anthony Albanese, but it could be someone else, needs to be put in front of this Royal Commission because all Australians need to get to the bottom of what has happened in Victoria.
Peta Credlin:
And of course the public money goes to the CFMEU. The CFMEU washes that to the Labour Party in donations. So he’s a beneficial witness as well as anything else. Thank you gentlemen. See you both next week.
This transcript with Daniel Wild talking on Credlin – News24 from 17 September 2026 has been edited for clarity.
