Rita Panahi:
Joining me now is Deputy Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs, Daniel Wild. Dan, the only good news here for the PM is that he still is the preferred prime minister despite his net approval rating sitting at -22%.
Daniel Wild:
Yeah. And what the news poll shows, and I think reinforces, is something that we’ve been talking about for a little while now, which is that Australia is becoming a lot more like continental Europe in our political composition, where there’s three, four parties that get between 15 to 30% of the vote. And that in Europe, we know it’s pretty common for different coalitions to be cobbled together on an ad hoc basis. Now, Australia isn’t at that point yet because we have a different voting system. We have a compulsory preferential voting system, which means that votes filter through the system in quite a different way than they do in most other democratic countries. But you look at the…
And you mentioned the fact that the coalition’s on 18 and the Greens are on 14. When you look at the Liberal Party, they’re probably on 16, right? Because the Nats normally get about two or 3% nationwide because their vote is concentrated in the region. So the Libs are only a little bit ahead of the Greens at the moment. So, that sort of puts it into perspective. But in terms of having this multi-party system, I think that’s something that is going to continue at least until the next election, and possibly for many years to come thereafter.
Rita Panahi:
Yes. I think we’ve got a new political paradigm in this country. And there are a lot of people in denial about it, including members of the coalition. Now, I can’t see these polls getting any better for Labor in the near future, Dan, given their refusal to really meaningfully tackle the migration issue. They’re not going to reverse course on net-zero. That’s causing considerable pain, cost of living pain. How do you see Labor tackling their poll numbers? A lot of focus is on the coalition, but Labor is in a bit of strife itself.
Daniel Wild:
Well, they are in strife. Those two issues you mentioned are very interesting, because I agree with you that they’re not going to formally ditch net-zero, nor are they going to ditch the policies that support net-zero. But Chris Bowen, at his Press Club address, didn’t mention net-zero even once. And when you go back and look at some of his recent speeches, he’s not talking about it. Anthony Albanese isn’t talking about it. So, net-zero is dead as a concept. Yes, there’s still a lot of damaging policies. Don’t get me wrong, the polls and wires that are going up across regional Australia and everything that goes with that is a huge problem. But the government isn’t championing net-zero because it is unpopular and it is not working. And when you look at migration, we all know Tony Burke is trying maybe to do something to cut the numbers, though I don’t think they’ll ever cut them in any big way.
So, I think Labor will try to walk and chew gum. They’re going to try to tell the electorate that they’re cutting numbers so that they can tell the outer suburban blue collar people they’re cutting numbers. But they’re not going to really cut them, so that they can tell the migrant voters in their electorate they’re not really cutting numbers. So they’re going to try and do both things at once. Whether they can get away with it or not, I think it remains to be seen. But there’s no doubt in my mind politically that’s what they’re going to do.
Rita Panahi:
Now, former Japanese ambassador to Australia, Shingo Yamagami, has warned that Anthony Albanese’s melons joke about Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has damaged his standing in Japan. Writing in The Australian, Yamagami says the comments were unthoughtful and showed a lack of strategic judgement . But it seems Labor are oblivious about the damage that’s been done. Have a listen here to how Tanya Plibersek defends the Prime Minister’s ill-considered comments.
Anthony Albanese:
The Japanese prime minister brought a melon here.
Nikki Osborne:
How did he get that through customs?
Anthony Albanese:
She, it’s a royal melon.
Nikki Osborne:
Oh, she smuggled… It was a she?
Anthony Albanese:
She.
Nikki Osborne:
Did she smuggle it?
Anthony Albanese:
I don’t know. I don’t-
Nikki Osborne:
Oh, I’m expecting-
Anthony Albanese:
Got a couple of melons.
Nikki Osborne:
She brought two?
Anthony Albanese:
She brought two, as you do.
Nikki Osborne:
She just came in looking like Pamela Anderson.
Anthony Albanese:
She brought two.
Nikki Osborne:
Yes. Really?
Anthony Albanese:
And they’re beautiful.
Natalie Barr:
Tanya, the former ambassador has said this morning this was insulting, unthoughtful, and that the last thing the Japanese PM was expecting was, “To be so casually mocked by Australia’s leader.” Do you agree?
Barnaby Joyce:
Tanya-
Tanya Plibersek:
No. No. I completely disagree with that interpretation of what the prime minister was saying. I completely disagree. I’m really glad that you played that, because I think people can make their own minds up.
Barnaby Joyce:
They have.
Rita Panahi:
Bizarre. Bizarre reaction. Instead of acknowledging the comment was off colour, Tanya Plibersek, the great feminist, stood by every word.
Natalie Barr:
We’ve got the former ambassador saying, “The Prime Minister, please enjoy these melons without thinking about a woman’s anatomy.” That’s a former ambassador to Tokyo saying that. This isn’t me saying this, or the media.
Barnaby Joyce:
No.
Natalie Barr:
Tanya, it was in the same podcast as the Kylie Minogue shag comment. Do you think he should have actually said those words?
Barnaby Joyce:
Would you have said that, Tanya?
Tanya Plibersek:
I don’t do comedy, I stick to interviews like this.
Natalie Barr:
Was it funny?
Rita Panahi:
It wasn’t funny. It was cheap and tacky and crass, Dan. Why can’t they just acknowledge… They’ve apologised for the Kylie Minogue comments. Why can’t they just acknowledge this was probably a bigger mistake? Because we’re talking about a world leader here who has been mocked, and it has been noticed in Japan and elsewhere.
Daniel Wild:
Yeah. This was a much bigger deal than the Kylie Minogue comment, which was pretty crass. But I was never that fired up about it, to be honest. But the comment about the Japanese situation was very strange, very ill-considered. And you’re quite right to point out the hypocrisy. Just imagine it was someone on the centre right of politics that had made that comment. You reckon Tanya Plibersek would have been saying the same things? Of course not, it’s all about politics for Labor.
But don’t underestimate the significant impact that this will have on the relationship that we have with Japan. The personal relationship between leaders is not the only thing that matters, but it is a very important thing. And for this kind of comment to be made by Albanese without any apology or acknowledgement that it was just wrong, I think is going to damage that relationship. So, this is quite bizarre why they can’t just front up and acknowledge that.
Rita Panahi:
Now, treasury documents have revealed that the Albanese government knew its 5% home deposit scheme could lead to first home buyers falling into negative equity. The revelation comes as auction clearance rates pushed above 50%. But, Dan, they are still well below historic levels for the 11th week straight since Labor announced housing tax changes in the budget. And we’ve got the Reserve Bank meeting tomorrow, and hopefully they will not touch rates, or at least they won’t put them up. That would be disastrous for the housing sector right now, Dan. Their current climate is as bad as many experts have seen it for many, many years.
Daniel Wild:
Well, this is the latest failure that comes on the back of many years of failures of housing policy by the government. Because, of course, even if we go back pre-budget, pre the capital gains tax and everything, we still had a problem. Which is the government had the National Housing Accord where they said they’re going to build 1.2 million well located homes within five years, which means they have to get 20,000 built a month on average to get to that target. Now, there’s been two years of that. We’ve had about 24, 25 months. And guess how many targets they’ve met? Precisely zero. Okay, they’ve met not one single target of their housing accord. So they haven’t got the houses built to start with.
We also know that they’ve had this unprecedented mass migration surge of about 1.5 million people on a net basis coming into our country, pushing up demand without having the houses getting built to begin with. And now we know every single day that goes by there’s new advice and new evidence coming out that the government does not understand the implications of its own policies. As you point out, you’ve got new home buyers that were lured into the market on the 5% scheme that are now in negative equity, which puts them under the pump straight away. So they’ve got this thing wrong completely from the start. And I think this is just another example of that fact.
Rita Panahi:
Now, locals in Melbourne’s west have rallied over the weekend to demand tougher bail laws and increased police resources following the death of a beloved grocery store owner. 60 year old Van Viet Truong died after confronting a group of teens accused of stealing from a clothes shop in the suburb of Sunshine a week ago. His nephew told 9News he was sick and tired of Victorian Labor’s soft on crime policies.
Hung Truong:
I’m sick and tired of this government (beep). You say adult crime, adult time. Well, (beep) do it. Now my auntie has no husband. My cousins have no father. And this is crap. Manslaughter, what the hell?
Rita Panahi:
Dan, this man who died was a great Australian, precisely the type of migrant we want. Hardworking, law-abiding. He acted heroically in defending someone who was being allegedly robbed and attacked. And the concerns expressed there are just so widely held. Because we keep hearing about tough on crime measures, we never see it. Those who are accused of this crime are already back on the streets.
Daniel Wild:
Well, this is what happens when you have a radical left-wing government. Daniel Andrews always used to make a point of he was running the most progressive government in Australia. And Jacinta Allan believed the same thing. And Ben Carroll believes the same thing too. Well, this is what it looks like. This is what a progressive government looks like. It looks like lawlessness. It looks like not holding people to account. It looks like having $200 billion and growing debt. It looks like businesses shutting down and people fleeing. That is what a progressive left-wing government gets you, by their own admission. That was the whole point of the Daniel Andrews government, to set up the most left-wing government in Australia. And these are the tragic, heart-wrenching, real world consequences of having a failed crime strategy.
Because there’s many people within Labor, I’m not saying all of them, but many that refuse to put personal responsibility at the heart of the justice system. If you believe that everybody’s a victim, the victim of the system, they’re the victim of oppression, they’re the victim of their circumstances, then you’re going to get a system that doesn’t properly punish people when they’ve done the wrong thing. Now, I’m not saying there’s no mitigating circumstances, everybody gets that. But you’ve got to have personal responsibility at the heart of the system. And many Labor governments don’t believe in that concept.
Rita Panahi:
They don’t at all. And they tried to copy Queensland’s adult crime, adult time. But they watered it down so much, it’s got such gaping holes that it’s really had little impact thus far. Daniel Wild, thank you so much for your time.
This transcript with Daniel Wild talking on The Rita Panahi Show News24 from 10 August 2026 has been edited for clarity.
