In this interview, Adam Creighton appeared on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research on criminal justice.
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.
Rita Panahi:
Joining me now is Senior Fellow and Chief Economist at the Institute of Public Affairs, Adam Creighton, and former Labour MP, Michael Danby.
Adam, I’ll start with you. Party sources have told The Australian that there is a possibility of a leadership challenge before the end of the year. Could we cope with another one?
Adam Creighton:
Well, look, personally, I hope that there’s not. I think it’s too early. I think the party needs to sort out what it stands for. I don’t think it’s the jockey. I think it’s the horse, really, and they really need a clear set of policies. I mean, Sussan Ley does deserve a big tick, I think, for dumping net zero. I mean, it should have happened much earlier. It took far too long, but it has happened and I think so she should be given a few months at least to try to take carriage of that very significant policy.
Personally, I have doubts that she’ll be able to, that’s my personal view, but just there’s no need to change over Christmas, I don’t think. The election’s still more than two years away. They need a policy on immigration first before they think about changing leaders, I think. I mean, you’ve got Clare O’Neil out there at the moment giving these ridiculous tweets on housing saying, “The only thing the federal government can do is build more houses to fix the crisis.” Well, no, no, it can cut immigration. Right?
Rita Panahi:
Well, that’s another tick for Andrew Hastie because remember, he stepped down from the opposition front bench over immigration because he did want to have some dramatic changes.
Michael, I think it’s the jockey and the horse. I think the policies obviously need to be clear, but I don’t know if Sussan Ley is the person to prosecute the case because her own personal principles and ideology aren’t aligned with the direction the Libs need to go. She would be one of the backers of net zero, I’m sure of that, though now she has to argue against it.
Michael Danby:
I think she’s done relatively well since that change of policy and arguing for it. She seems to be sincere. I know Andrew. I hope he gets to spend at least one last idyllic summer back with his very young family in West Australia. I think that would be very good for him.
I think I agree with Adam that it’s too early for the Libs to make another move. You’d have, my goodness, all of state leaders plus another cathartic move inside the Liberal Party, but the election was only in May, Rita. We forget it. It’s till May ’28. They’ve got 95 to 43.
Rita Panahi:
I know.
Michael Danby:
The Liberals would need to win 25 seats and I think Andrew Hastie as leader or whatever leader with a more cut-through message would improve their result, but they’re almost in an impossible position.
Adam Creighton:
[inaudible 00:02:30]
Rita Panahi:
I disagree with that. I think that politics has changed. The 24-hour news cycle has changed. You can have these dramatic shifts in the vote. You don’t need to have two, three terms to get back into power if you’ve had a landslide loss.
Adam Creighton:
That’s true.
Rita Panahi:
And I think they need to do the work. I just think they are living in dreamland if they think they can change leaders six months before an election and convince the Australian people that they’re fit for office.
Adam Creighton:
I just wanted to say that these polls are really pretty meaningless, I think, this far out. I mean, no one’s paying attention. I mean, I think-
Rita Panahi:
46% being the-
Adam Creighton:
… no one’s paying any attention.
Rita Panahi:
… preferred opposition leaders.
Adam Creighton:
So what? I mean, it doesn’t have any-
Rita Panahi:
Who knows?
Adam Creighton:
… correlation with people losing their job. With any job-
Michael Danby:
And the Liberal Party, you’re right, does have Don Quixote, Chris Bowen, on their side too, so that could swing people back away from the windmills towards reality.
Rita Panahi:
Just one-word answer. Who would Labour Party fear most out of the contenders?
Michael Danby:
They say Hastie-
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, I think hastie.
Michael Danby:
… but they also say that he’s the one that they want the most because he’s the easiest to beat. It’s rubbish. We don’t know either way. It’s three years away.
Rita Panahi:
It would at least give the Australian people a clear choice if we had a Hastie in there.
Now, let’s talk about Victoria, and Premier Jacinta Allan has called out the state’s judiciary saying they are too soft on crime. In an exclusive interview with the Herald Sun, Premier Allan claims her Adult Time for Adult Crime Policy was necessary because Victorian sentencing had been too soft. She said, “It’s sending a message to the brazen violent offenders, it’s sending a message to victims of crime that we’ve listened to those very clear views that have been put to me, and that there’s not enough consequences, and yes, a message to the justice system as a whole.”
Well, there you go. Adam, to me, this is just weapon-grade chutzpah. Labour appointed these-
Adam Creighton:
Judges, exactly.
Rita Panahi:
… soft-on-crime judges, uniformly left-wing types, and they knew what their views were when they appointed them to these positions. How can they possibly remain surprised now?
Adam Creighton:
No, look, that is totally true. I mean, the crisis is one of their making and now they’re trying to fix it, so hopefully voters know that. But this was always going to happen. I think it was a risk for the Liberal opposition here, I think, to focus too much on crime because you’re always going to get a Labour so-called crackdown in the lead-up to the election, and it’s going to neutralise the issue, I think, because most people out there, they don’t follow things as closely as us, sadly, and they don’t know it was Labor’s bail laws in the first place that triggered some of these problems.
The other annoying thing about this too is it kind of stigmatises the whole state as if everyone is committing more crime, but it’s actually a very small section of the community that’s actually doing the crime.
Rita Panahi:
But we are in a record-breaking crime-
Adam Creighton:
Oh, yes, yes.
Rita Panahi:
I mean, the statistics-
Adam Creighton:
Specifically defined [inaudible 00:05:23]
Michael Danby:
Those magistrates are created in the image of the people that appointed them-
Rita Panahi:
Exactly.
Michael Danby:
… and that’s where the problem comes from. The laws are all there if they want to be enforced or they’re nonsense-
Adam Creighton:
Exactly, exactly.
Michael Danby:
… virtue signalling like the so-called mask law, where now the police have to come up to some demonstrators and say, “Oh, could you please take off your mask?” And of course-
Adam Creighton:
They used to love masks on years ago.
Michael Danby:
… they should just take it off them if they’re involved in a riot or a demonstration that’s inciting violence in the city.
Rita Panahi:
And when they appoint these members of the judiciary, and Labour have been very clever in the past in appointing some very young people to the bench because they’re in that position for 30 years sometimes-
Michael Danby:
Well, not just magistrates, it’s also-
Rita Panahi:
… it’s for life.
Michael Danby:
… in the county court and higher positions. There are some people that gossip amongst lawyers and barristers is, “Oh my goodness, that person was appointed without”-
Rita Panahi:
Exactly, and-
Michael Danby:
… “any qualifications or legal qualifications.”
Rita Panahi:
If they’re highly ideological, it helps if they’re young because then they’ll sit on the bench for 30-odd years, then they’re in the running.
Now, this is just incredible footage I’m about to play you. You will see this many times, but every time I watch it, I’m enthralled all over again. Billionaire James Packer unleashing on former Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, calling him, amongst other things, human filth.
James Packer:
Daniel Andrews is about my least favourite person in the world. I think Daniel Andrews not only ruined Victoria, he almost ruined my life. I couldn’t speak more lowly of Daniel Andrews. I think he’s human filth.
Joe Aston:
Ah, jeez. It sounds like a Joe Aston column.
James Packer:
Well, there you go. I hope he sues me.
Rita Panahi:
“I hope he sues me.” That’s just incredible. That was on Joe Aston’s podcast. Adam, I wonder what really think about the former premier.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, look, it was great. I just wish more Victorians would also realise that that’s a fair characterization, in my view, given the state that he’s left the state in. I mean, just to take the balance sheet, $194 billion of debt. I mean, that basically can’t be paid off. And he said that, and James Packer does know his way around a balance sheet. He’s seen the state finances. They are very, very bad. I mean, whoever wins the next election has a really big problem on their hands.
Rita Panahi:
Well, James obviously has some personal grievances with, I think, some of the laws that were changed whilst he was-
Michael Danby:
Changed at the last minute.
Rita Panahi:
… selling Crown when it was in the midst of finalising a deal.
I don’t know why that happened the way it did, but more broadly, for a politician who we were told was just a master politician, hugely popular, Dan Andrews gets a hostile reception just about everywhere he goes from what I can work out. I’m constantly getting reports from people saying they saw him being heckled or some harsh word spoken, even in his favourite haunts, and I won’t name them here because I don’t want to invite more aggression his way, but I can’t think of another politician in this country who would be treated like that, former prime ministers.
Michael Danby:
He doesn’t seem to be able to get into a golf club either, Rita.
Rita Panahi:
There’s that too.
Michael Danby:
I think the hatred stems from the harshness of the COVID lockdown in Victoria, which was probably the worst in the world. But the thing that I’m not upset about how he affected the Packer deal, but I am upset about the way he defamed Australia by standing on that military parade next to Kim Jong Un. That’s a picture that should live in infamy. I can’t forgive, and I don’t think Australians will forgive Dan Andrews for that ever.
Rita Panahi:
And it’s been revealed, Michael, that Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong, none of their staffers approached Dan Andrews before that Chinese Communist Party war commemoration, and that lengthy handshake he had with Xi Jinping, that’s probably going to set him up for life if he wasn’t already set up for life. I’m sure there’ll be so many in China who would be looking to him for business opportunities perhaps, but-
Adam Creighton:
It seems like you’re going to get them too.
Rita Panahi:
… it seems incredible that something that defied diplomatic convention, it didn’t seem to concern the Albanese government or DFAT.
Michael Danby:
Rita, there’s a systemic problem here. All the premiers, and he’s the worst, Dan Andrews, don’t have serious foreign policy advisers, and the Chinese Communist Party is trying to deal with sub-national states and provinces so they can align one against the national interest. And DFAT and whoever is the government of the day should see that all of these premiers, rather than using people from the Communist Party’s United Front as their China adviser, have someone from DFAT who represents the national interest.
Rita Panahi:
And Dan Andrews signed up to the Belt and Road Initiative. Adam, the Australian government had to change the law and junk that deal, but he was the only one, no other-
Adam Creighton:
That’s true.
Rita Panahi:
… premier signed up. No other… The links there certainly trouble many Victorians, but it’s ancient history now, I guess.
Adam Creighton:
Well, I don’t know.
Rita Panahi:
Or is it?
Adam Creighton:
It’s not, we don’t use that phrase anymore, Belt and Road, but the Allan government was over there recently. The premier was there for two weeks basically trying to get investment into the suburban railway, but who knows what else?
Michael Danby:
Who’s financing our debt though? I mean, it’s gone up and up and up, the foreign part of the debt, but who are those foreigners? Well, I bet you there’s a-
Adam Creighton:
The United Front, yeah.
Michael Danby:
… sort of a capital called Beijing that is involved with a lot of it.
Adam Creighton:
Definitely.
Rita Panahi:
So not ancient history after all.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, exactly.
Rita Panahi:
Michael Danby, Adam Creighton, thank you so much for your time.
Michael Danby:
Thanks, Rita.
Adam Creighton:
Thanks, Rita.
This transcript with Adam Creighton appeared on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia 24 November 2025 has been edited for clarity.
