Caleb Bond:
Caleb Bond in for the great man tonight. Lots to get through with my panel. Let’s bring in IPA Deputy Executive Director Daniel Wild and Victorian Libertarian Leader David Limbrick. Gents, welcome.
Now, as I spoke about earlier, renewable energy projects now apparently being eyed as the next cash cow for organised crime. And as I mentioned, it comes after bikies, gang linked firms. The CFMEU were exposed [inaudible 00:00:27] Victoria’s Big Build, which you both well know about. Daniel, you used to live in Victoria. David, of course, you are there. And now they’re saying that the next vanguard is going to be renewable energy sites. I mean, I suppose it’s no great surprise, Daniel. If they lose all their money from the government projects because they’re winding up, they’ve got to go and do it somewhere else.
Is anyone actually serious about cleaning this up? I mean, the Allan government in Victoria has basically ignored it would seem. The feds pulled apart the ABCC, so there’s no one really monitoring what the CFMEU is doing anymore. Why would they not go into big renewable energy projects, 35 billion odd dollars worth over the next decade?
Daniel Wild:
Well, exactly right. And it’s just another example of how Victoria is completely and totally broken when it comes to these projects. They don’t even have the money to pay for it. And what happens if Victoria doesn’t stay in Victoria? This is a problem for all Australians because it’s now openly talked about, certainly in sections of the finance community, which is what happens when Victoria just can’t pay back its debts. They’re funnelling money into these projects.
And you look at the outcomes. Well, you look at net zero, it’s destroying the regional communities. It doesn’t work. It’s more expensive than the current system, which is far superior. And now you’ve got these questions about criminal elements that are syphoning off the money associated with these projects. There’s just, every single week, there’s another story about the money that’s going out the door that the government doesn’t have. It doesn’t have a plan to pay it back. It’s got absolutely no intention of dealing with these issues. And I just think that Victorians can’t wait to get to November where there may be a prospect of a change in all of this.
Caleb Bond:
Well, do you think it actually has any cut through, David, in Victoria? Are people worried about the fact that this level of misbehaviour has gone on and that it’s not about to end? The suggestion is it just moves on to other projects.
David Limbrick:
Well, the governments refuse to have a royal commission into the corruption in the big build, so they don’t really understand or they don’t want to understand the root causes of these things, many of which are due to the government policies themselves. And I’ve been out and talking to people about things and people are worried about the state’s debt. Surprisingly, the number of people that, just like average everyday people, that talk to me and they’re worried about the state’s debt is real. It’s surprisingly large. And I think people can understand it. They understand … And when they see these figures, like the figure of $15 billion going off to organised crime, and then they see the potholes in the road and they’re saying, “Well, where is my tax money actually going here?” And they’re really concerned about it, I think.
Caleb Bond:
It was going to strippers apparently to be cleaners. And what a job. And when they start doing that on the renewable energy projects, it’ll be about the only interesting thing going on on a renewable energy project, I suppose.
But anyway, gents, I want to talk about tax reform. The treasurer, Jim Chalmers in the nine papers today, basically saying that if they walked away from the budget, which is coming next month and it was seen as a tax reform budget, then he would be happy with that. Now the two things that we know are on the table of the capital gains discount and negative gearing and the PMs talking about intergenerational inequity and housing access, and all this sort of stuff. But none of this, David, is real tax reform. It’s charging people more tax so they can fill up the coffers. If we’re going to have tax reform, you’d like to think we’d be talking about getting rid of or reducing taxes.
David Limbrick:
Absolutely. In my view, the only time that you should ever raise taxes is if you think that all of your spending is absolutely essential and everything that you’re spending your money on is 100% efficient. There’s not a single person in the country that actually believes that. What we need to be talking about is cutting the cost of government so that we can reduce taxes, because all of these taxes that they increase, they have real world consequences. And when they’re talking about mucking around with the housing system, especially things that affect the amount of rentals that are available for people to lease out, this is a really dangerous thing that they’re talking about. They need to be talking about cutting the size of government and seriously.
Caleb Bond:
Well, it’s tight enough as it is, Daniel, right?
Daniel Wild:
Well, exactly right. Whenever you hear the word tax reform, that’s code for a tax hike and more taxes, so that’s what Australians are going to get hit with. And you touched on this in your monologue, Caleb, which is if you want to do something about housing and housing affordability and home ownership, which we must, you’ve got to look at two things, which is supply and demand. The demand has been cranked up by this massive immigration programme, which has not had the supply to go along with it. So step number one is you’ve got to cut immigration.
Step number two, you need to get more houses built full stop, whether it’s for rent or whether it’s for buying them. If you’re not getting more onto the market, you’re not going to deal with these issues. So tinkering around the edges won’t do anything about that.
The other thing you’ve got to look at is when you’re changing the rules of the game halfway through the game, you create a disincentive for people to put out their money to start with. And Australia is not exactly a very attractive nation at the moment for investing in to begin with. So look, I just think this budget’s going to be just another disaster.
Caleb Bond:
Indeed. Now, gents, Moira Deeming, she is back in the Liberal Party. She’s won the endorsement. This whole thing is just ridiculous. Twice they tried to run a coup against her. Of course, last weekend she lost her pre-selection to Dinesh Gourisetty, and then he was deemed ineligible because he’d given a character reference to a paedophile, so he gets struck off. Then they put the pre-selection back up again, and then the bloke who was mates with Gourisetty, who was basically meant to try and roll her again, he was deemed ineligible because he hadn’t filled out his papers correctly. I mean, David, this is just pathetic, absolutely pathetic.
Now, I’m glad in some ways that Moira will be back in the Liberal Party because she ought to be there, but it kind of means that they don’t have to face up to the reality of the problem, which is that they are so divided they can kind of paper over that now. But how can you try to put yourself forward as a party of potential government and you can’t even run a coup when you’ve got two attempts to do so?
David Limbrick:
Well, it’s certainly not a good look. And if they’re going to the Victorian public and saying that they’re going to be competent to run the state in November, it certainly puts a lot of doubts in people’s minds. It seems like a bit of a poisoned chalice for Moira. I’m glad that Moira got what she wanted. She’s got her pre-selection and she’ll be back, but I don’t know what’s going to happen in November. But all of the damage that’s been done to the Liberal Party over the last few months has been of their own doing. Labour hasn’t even gotten started with them yet. And I sort of see, I look at what happened in Western Australia, I look at what happened in South Australia, I think we might be headed for a wipe out of the Liberals in Victoria as well.
Caleb Bond:
Well, it’d be amazing if we see it. Daniel, I got to say, she has a great deal of grace this morning, a lot more than I would have in this circumstance. She put a post on X thanking people who had stood by her and she singled out the leader of the Liberal Party, Jess Wilson, who went against her faction to back in Deeming. But you could totally understand if she just said, “No, I’m done here. I’m going to walk away.” Somehow she’s decided to stick around.
Daniel Wild:
Yeah. Well, I thought she was probably going to pull the pin, to be honest. This is the way they treat people. I mean, this is why it’s so hard to find good candidates that all stick it out if this is the way you’re going to be treated.
But this also goes to a much bigger issue as David was talking about, how does this look to the community when you’re putting yourself up to be an alternative government? But also, the Liberal Party is now becoming very much rivened by sectional and factional interests. And this was the whole reason why Menzies set up the Liberal Party in the wake of the United Australia Party, because the United Australia Party having been wiped out at the 1943 election. Prior to that had kind of been taken over by these sectional interests, it failed to really be a national party. And Menzies set up the Liberal Party to be a national party. The structure of the party was done in a way to try and insulate it from being taken over into being a front for sectional interest is what the Labour Party is.
But now when you look at the Liberal Party, not just in Victoria, but in many other places, I think a lot of people start to say, “Well, how are you going to be a truly national party when you appear to be rivened by very deep ideological, personal and factional differences?” So I think that the Moira Deeming issue plays into that much bigger story about where the party is at the moment.
Caleb Bond:
Indeed. Now very quickly before we go, gents, the latest from the NASA mission, Artemis is now closer to the moon than earth. The crew’s taken manual control of Orion and they’re getting ready to see parts of the lunar far side that human eyes have never seen before. But even on a history making mission, they can’t escape one very earthly problem, the toilet is playing up. NASA’s had to clear it for, let’s just say, limited use. Number two only, while number one is being stored in backup containers, 10 seconds each. Would you go in a rocket, Daniel, if you knew that’s what you’d have to put up with?
Daniel Wild:
No, I would not. And I think it goes to show that it’s not all glamorous. I think you’re training as an astronaut, maybe you need to take a spanner up there as well to get it figured out.
Caleb Bond:
Hey, David, would you be there?
David Limbrick:
Look, it seems to be that sometimes you can’t boldly go where no one’s gone before.
Caleb Bond:
Indeed. Daniel Wild, David Limbrick, happy Easter to do you both.
This transcript of Daniel Wild on Paul Murray Live Sky News Australia from 3 April 2026 has been edited for clarity.
