In this interview, Adam Creighton appeared on Mornings with Chris Smith 2SM to discuss the IPA’s research into unprecedented mass migration.
All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
Chris Smith:
Let’s get to Adam Creighton, Senior Fellow and Chief Economist with the Institute of Public Affairs, columnist with the Australian newspaper. Adam, welcome to 2SM.
Adam Creighton:
Good morning, Chris.
Chris Smith:
Well, Anthony Albanese is no longer seen in Bondi. He was the first to lay a wreath on the Monday or the Monday morning, but he’s copying criticism as he did at that press conference yesterday for being missing in action. Now he says he’s phoned some of the families of victims and that he’s been in homes in Bondi. What’s going on here?
Adam Creighton:
Well, look, I think he’s got thin-skinned and he doesn’t want to be yelled at and heckled. I think that’s what it is. But I think he probably would be, but I think he still should have gone to all of these. I think it would’ve shown him to be a stronger person because, I mean, even he’s admitted he could have done more, the government could have done more to stop this horrible tragedy. So I think he’s poorly advised in not going because that’s become the story. They’re talking about.
Chris Smith:
At the very least, he should have gone to the funerals.
Adam Creighton:
Yes, I think so. Definitely. Definitely.
Chris Smith:
But of course, he’s seen Tony Burke being heckled. There were other ministers who turned up, they were heckled. Tanya Plibersek decided to turn up. Now, no doubt she received some heckling somewhere. I don’t know. But she would’ve been a member of the government, but that’s not the point. You’ve got to go and show your respects.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, certainly that is true. And I think they do deserve to be heckled. They haven’t taken this antisemitism problem seriously, and obviously it is a very serious problem. What to do about it? It’s just a diabolical situation, sadly. I mean, I think the horse has bolted on a lot of this stuff. We’ve let these hateful people into the country for many, many years and it’s like a cancer and it’s very hard to expunge. So I just despair at the country, to be honest.
Chris Smith:
Yesterday’s press conference, it was so after the event. Oh, we’ve got new laws coming in on antisemitism. And I could only just think, well, hang on a minute. We’ve got hate laws left, right, and centre at state and federal level, we’ve got any number of powers in the hands of the home affairs minister to get rid of hateful preachers and cancel visas and all that sort of stuff. This is just BS disguised as government-
Adam Creighton:
Exactly.
Chris Smith:
… who have missed the boat here. They should have been telling the Attorney General in July, not yesterday, to put these reforms together.
Adam Creighton:
No, that’s exactly right. We have amongst the strongest hate speech laws in the world already. And in fact, they were tightened, I think, just this year in February, both at the federal and the state level. They’re extremely strong. So it’s not an issue of laws. I mean, it’s already illegal, of course, to incite violence, very much so. And this is just a diversion, both the hate speech issue and also gun control. I mean, there’s just a lack of willingness to enforce the laws that exist. I mean, you mentioned the minister’s wide-ranging powers, and you’re right. The immigration minister can revoke anyone’s visa he wants. And I think we just saw a month or two ago, he kicked out some South African for going to a neo-Nazi rally, attending one. But I can’t recall any Muslim preachers being kicked out of Australia. Can you?
Chris Smith:
No. No.
Adam Creighton:
And indeed, Tony Burke went to the airport recently and greeted, I think, 1,900 or some of the 1,900 Gazans who’ve come here, Palestinians who’ve come here. I mean, they probably hate Israel, I would guess. I mean, why have we let them into the country when the US, which has kind of been funding the war, didn’t let in any.
Chris Smith:
And the overwhelming majority from the surveys that we have seen, left, right and centre, the overwhelming majority are supportive of Hamas, but they’re now in our suburbs.
Adam Creighton:
Exactly. I do not understand why the Australian government does this. I mean, we’re on the other side of the world. We led in disproportionately more of these hateful people than any other Western country. Why? It’s just crazy.
Chris Smith:
What could go wrong, Adam? What could go wrong?
Adam Creighton:
Well, yeah. Well, a lot can go wrong, sadly. And we’ve just got to pray and hope this doesn’t happen again, but it’s a shocking stain on Australia. It’s just hard to fathom what’s happened over the last week. But sadly, we just see all this, “Oh, the government must do something, do something.” But it just often makes the situation worse. And as we’ve discussed, they already have sufficient powers. This is just a distraction. In fact, the big government lefties would be wrapped in a way because they get to have more laws, more power. And of course, at some point in the future, these new hate speech laws will be turned against ordinary people because they’ll be vaguely written. That’s what’s going to happen, as it does in every country. So the problem is that we have hundreds, thousands of, I don’t know, thousands of hateful people.
We have these preachers and so forth. I mean, I know Peter Dutton suggested some task force. What would be interesting for the public to know is just how many of these hateful preachers are there and where are they? I mean, that would be an interesting fact to know.
Chris Smith:
Yeah. Peter Dutton has actually written in The Australian, and I think he’s hit the nail on the head. We need a task force to crack down, not just on antisemitism, but crack down on Islamic extremism. These are the two words that the prime minister is yet to mouth, Islamic extremism. This is what Sunday night is all about.
Adam Creighton:
Well, I think he’s just worried. They’re worried about those Southwestern seats in Sydney, sadly, and that’s why they won’t say these things. But it’s obviously a religious issue. It’s an extremist religious issue. And I don’t know why the government just doesn’t quickly make an example of some of these preachers and just revoke their visas. That would send a chill through the rest, I’m sure. And they have the power to do that. But as we just discussed, they very quick to export, to expel a South African who attended a legal rally. But all these other people, in my view, far more dangerous, are not expelled.
Chris Smith:
Yep, exactly. Look, I noticed that Peter Dutton in that piece today wrote about how stretched some of the spy agencies are. So let’s presume that ASIO is stretched. Well, ASIO may, may have prevented another violent attack yesterday by tipping off New South Wales police and counter-terrorism officers who took control of those seven men, one of them under the radar of ASIO. If they are stretched and we need to stop Islamic extremism and attacks from Islamic extremists, how about we give, forget about antisemitism laws, forget about gun laws, forget about bringing the New South Wales Parliament back. How about we give ASIO a billion dollars more?
Adam Creighton:
Well, yes. Look, I mean, they already get about 800 million, and I think they’ve failed a bit in this regard. I mean, one of these shooters was on a list, was on a watch list. And my understanding is he went to the Philippines to learn how to shoot. That should have raised some red flag with ASIO, but it clearly didn’t. So I wonder what the hell they’ve been doing. But look, your broader point is if they are stretched, yes, we should fund them more. That’s probably what the government should be spending money on rather than, as Judith Sloan mentioned this, we’re going to call them $250 million on multicultural programmes. Let’s just divert that to ASIO. Right?
Chris Smith:
Yeah, exactly. Daily Telegraph now reporting that the men who were arrested yesterday have ideological links to the Bondi gunman, and that has come from police sources directly to The Telegraph. Interesting. One last one, and I guess indirectly linked, the new immigration numbers are out, Adam.
Adam Creighton:
Yes. So we have 305,000 net overseas immigration in the 12 months to the end of June. The third highest in Australia’s history. We’ve had 1.27 million new migrants. Sorry, that’s net terms in just three years, which is just extraordinary. I mean, we have a population of 27 million or so. I mean, to take in that many people, largely I might add from developing nations, it’s just extraordinary. And the economic consequence is that we’ve had 10 of the last 13 quarters GDP per capita has gone down. I mean, Australia is in a deep economic funk, and it was very depressing to see in the budget update that the government basically doesn’t care. It’s not doing any major reform whatsoever. It’s just spending, spending, spending, and just hoping that it gets back in.
Chris Smith:
I’m covering three topics today: terrorism, immigration, we’ve just touched on that, and climate change and how it’s affecting our environment. And on all three basis, this country is stuffed.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, I would certainly agree with that. Just on the immigration, just to remind your listeners, so it was 90,000 was the average net immigration for about 40 years, and now it’s 305,000-
Chris Smith:
Yeah, just extraordinary.
Adam Creighton:
… just to give a scale of the change. And basically, in my view, this is just for the tertiary sectors making an absolute fortune. Most of these people coming to study.
Chris Smith:
Yep, exactly. I’ve got to leave it there, Adam. I’ve got a network break. Thank you very much for your contribution in 2025.
Adam Creighton:
No worries. Thorough enjoyed it, Chris.
This transcript with Adam Creighton talking on Mornings with Chris Smith 2SM from 19 December 2025 has been edited for clarity.
