Rita Panahi:
Joining me now is Deputy Executive Director at the Institute of Public Affairs, Daniel Wild. Dan, the prime minister and treasurer reluctantly accept that this is an issue, but they are standing by their records. The treasurer said yesterday that we are delivering the broadest productivity package since the 1990s, cutting red tape by over 10 billion a year, boosting GDP by 13 billion, and cutting taxes for businesses and startups by over 3.8 billion a year. Dan, is the Business Council of Australia misinformed on all of that and what the Albanese government is doing to boost productivity?
Daniel Wild:
Well, it’s a joke. I mean, Chalmers has just said what was the GDP is 13 billion higher. I mean, the entire size of our economy is something like two and a half trillion. So even on its own numbers, it’s bugger all that they’re doing. And what this government is focused on is not growth, but redistribution. Alls they’re doing is moving money around the economy, not actually growing it. And to the extent that there is any growth, it’s coming from population growth underpinned by mass migration, not from productivity growth. In fact, last year, over 90% of Australia’s total economic growth came from population growth as opposed to productivity growth. And you look at the government’s own budget papers, they’re basically conceding that the best it’s going to get is two and a half percent GDP growth every year. In the Hawke years, you had 4 or 5% GDP growth.
So I think that Jim Chalmers is in denial and unfortunately there’s no hope in sight on the economic front for Australians.
Rita Panahi:
Explain to my audience the importance of productivity, because I think some see it as an abstract concept. They don’t understand how it impacts their day-to-day life. But productivity is a real measure of living standards, isn’t it? If your productivity levels aren’t great, your living standards are probably going backwards.
Daniel Wild:
Well, that’s right. I mean, productivity growth basically means you can earn more money and work less hours or work fewer hours. I mean, that’s basically what you want. So we can do more with the existing things that we have, which is why productivity growth is the only way of actually increasing income. If you’re getting higher economic growth through population growth, your economy will be bigger, but you’ve also got more mouths to feed at the same time. And so therefore the benefits of that dissipate. So productivity growth is really the only way of getting better living standards for everybody over the long term, and that’s why it’s so important.
Rita Panahi:
Now Labor’s digital safety bill was unveiled last week. We’ve discussed it at great length on this programme, the draconian nature of the bill, the threat to free speech, the extraordinary powers it would grant the communications minister, Anika Wells, the worrying role of the leftist activist eSafety commissioner as well. And we know she has a track record of wanting to sense a mainstream opinion, like if you believe that men can’t breastfeed, apparently that’s a harmful opinion that needs to be censored. But on the ABC, they are gung ho for more censorship. Have a listen to Sarah Martin from The Guardian.
Sarah Martin:
This is harmful content that is being mainlined into children. And I feel like whose free speech are we censoring here? Are we censoring the internet? Well, it probably needs a bit of censorship, right? There’s a good argument for it.
Rita Panahi:
Dan, what’s your response to that?
Daniel Wild:
Well, maybe The Guardian should be censored, see how they like it when the shoe’s on the other foot. I mean, this is what’s going to happen, right? I mean, wait until you get One Nation on the government benches and they’re in charge of these powers. Is that what you want to do? This is not a smart play whatsoever. The reality is that this legislation that was released is all about the government trying to suppress One Nation’s vote because they lost the by-election in Western Australia. And Albanese himself has said it was because of the algorithms. No, it’s not because of the algorithms. It’s because people don’t like you and your government. That’s why Labor’s losing.
So this is designed to artificially prop up Labour standing in the polls. It is a very cynical political ploy. As you rightly point out, it would grant sweeping unprecedented powers to the communications minister who has been unable to explain this. Even the basics of this law or proposed law, she can’t explain it. So this is terrible.
But this is the third time that they’re trying to do it. They tried firstly with the misinformation laws a couple of years ago. Then they tried it with the hate speech laws in the wake of Bondi. Now both of those ended up getting kiboshed. So this is their third run at trying to grant powers either to a minister or, as you say, to the eSafety commissioner to censor the internet and what Australians can say.
Rita Panahi:
Dan, it really is such a sinister policy. And I know what you’re saying about the fact that it could backfire on Labour, it could backfire on the Greens and you can have One Nation in charge and determining what sort of speech is acceptable. But these sorts of policies, these sort of censorships seems to serve the left and they know that and that’s why they relentlessly pursue it. Now let’s stick with the communications and sports minister, Anika Wells, who has confirmed she will be at the AFL grand final. She says it’s important for ministers to be on the ground at major sporting events.
Anika Wells:
It’s a huge event in both the communications and sports stakeholder calendars. Everybody, be it broadcast CEOs, be it national sport organisations, executives, expect to be able to see their sport minister and they expect their sport minister to be on the ground.
Rita Panahi:
Can’t believe she’s trying to justify this, Dan. You think the minister, for all she is, would have more important things to attend to than another junket?
Daniel Wild:
Yeah. Well, she’s not going to be on the ground, is she? She’s going to be in a corporate box. So there’s another piece of misinformation. And who are the stakeholders? She talks about the CEOs. What about the people? What about the actual people that go to the game? She’s not interested in them whatsoever. It’s all about hobnobbing around with donors to the Labour Party. That’s what this is about. You get access, pay to play. That’s how they do this thing here. So, okay, does a sports minister have a role to play in some of this? Sure. But Anika Wells has a proven track record of misusing taxpayer funds and trying then to actively mislead the Australian public about it. So I just don’t understand why they would do this, particularly when she can’t even explain the laws as we just discussed, the digital duty of care law. She should be at home boning up on the laws rather than spending her time in a corporate box at taxpayer cost.
Rita Panahi:
Now, One Nation’s immigration policy has been unveiled and the party is promising to slash migrant intake by around 760,000 over a three year period. The policy will target reductions in five key areas, student visas, graduate visas, also temporary skilled visas, bridging visas, and unlawful non-citizens and people on expired visas. We’ve got about anywhere 70 to 80,000 of those. The majority of visa applications will also need to be made overseas, with the exception of graduate visas and temporary skilled visas for foreign students. Applications from countries marked Do Not Travel by smart traveller will also be paused.
Dan, Pacific and working holiday makers, they are crucial to regional and agricultural communities. They’re going to be unaffected by these changes, these proposed changes. What’s your assessment of this policy?
Daniel Wild:
Well, overall, this is a very good policy. I think it’s a game changer. We obviously need to have a reset of our immigration system. The other part of their policy is to have a negative net overseas migration intake for three years is what they’ve said in the documentation that they’ve made available to the public. So this is something that has to happen. Our immigration system is not serving the interest of the Australian public. It is serving the interest of universities, of the big corporates, of migration agents and of other sectional interests, but it’s not working in the interest of our country. Clearly there needs to be a very big cup, dramatic corrective action is needed.
And on the face of it, based on having read through these numbers, this is the way to go. I think it’s only fair that the universities basically have to do the lion’s share of the work here because they have abused our migration system for so long. And the point here is not to blame migrants themselves because of course you’d want to come here. We’re the greatest nation on earth and if I was on the other side of the border, I’d be doing everything I could to get into our country, but we need to have a regulated orderly migration system. And I think what One Nation has put out there would go a long way to achieving that.
Rita Panahi:
What about the response we’ve seen today? There’s been a lot of scaremongering, members of the Labour Party, even some of the members of the coalition saying a policy like this would plunge the country into recession.
Daniel Wild:
Well, that’s nonsense. We’re already in a per capita recession and migration is causing it. Migration is the economic problem. If you don’t understand that, you’re nowhere near reality. So look at what Canada did. Canada cut immigration to the point where they had negative overall population growth and their per capita growth went up. So cutting immigration because it’s too big and it’s too misdirected, cutting it now is going to increase living standards for Australians. Now, yes, you’ll have the usual vested interests and so forth that are going to cry about it, but the reality is dramatically cutting immigration is going to be good for our economy and good for our society.
Rita Panahi:
Now, I want to play you a video of students, part of the Socialist Alternative who’ve released a video calling Pauline Hanson racist and encouraging people to attend a student strike.
Dan, the student strikes are an issue in themselves. International students interfering in domestic politics is another issue. And for me, so is the nerve of anyone with any connection to a communist country, using our freedoms to promote socialism. How do you see it?
Daniel Wild:
Well, I just think it’s laughable. I mean, do you need any more evidence that the international student visas need to be cut? Why are these people here at our universities? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If people want to protest, that’s their business. But I think it goes to the fact that students aren’t learning anything on campus, universities aren’t providing an education that’s valuable. And unfortunately, a lot of young Australians and students more generally have just had this nonsense drummed into them from a young age and we’re seeing the negative impacts of that throughout our society.
Rita Panahi:
Now an Australian associate professor, who collaborated with Chinese military scientists on covert surveillance, has been handed another taxpayer grant for high security research. University of New South Wales engineering associate, Professor Derrick Wing Kwan Ng received a $1.3 million grant to develop 6G wireless networks powered by antennas that can reposition in real time for faster and more efficient wireless services. Dan, it is the third and most expensive Australian Research Council grant given to projects involving this academic. Does it pass the pub test?
Daniel Wild:
No, it doesn’t pass the pub test. We know that the universities and other educational institutions have been heavily influenced by China and the Chinese Communist Party. In the past, we’ve seen that with the Confucius Institutes. Now I know that a lot of those have been removed and terminated, but we’re talking about some very important sectors of our economy that are being investigated. Anything to do with ties to the Chinese Communist Party needs to be taken very seriously. So I think most Australians would have pretty significant reservations about this money, why is it being provided to this academic and have the appropriate protocols been followed? I don’t know.
Rita Panahi:
Dan Wild, thank you for your time.
This transcript with Daniel Wild talking on The Rita Panahi Show – News24 from 14 September 2026 has been edited for clarity.
