Tension in a tit-for-tat visa cancellation

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Hey, folks, PK is on her way, but I'm Erin Park, host of the new podcast series, Expance, Nowhere Man.

This story has taken me from the searing heat of the great sandy desert to the freezing heart of Alaska as I try to understand why American Robert Baguki plunged into the Australian wilderness on purpose, pushing himself to the brink of death.

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Expanse.

Nowhere, man.

Australia cancels the visa of a Netanyahu government MP, a far-right MP,

and Israel returns the favour, taking visas away from Australian diplomats.

And those on the coveted guest list have descended on Canberra for the economic reform roundtable.

Everyone's very optimistic.

That is the word of the day.

So if you're not optimistic, you can't listen to this podcast.

You must be very optimistic.

But what is the message the government wants to send on day one?

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellis.

And I'm Raph Epstein.

Raf, this morning, the Australian government is on the Israeli government's radar.

And in fact, we're very much in the Israeli media, Australia.

We are

registering very much,

leading us effectively to a visa cancellation for a visa cancellation.

It's a bit tit-for-tash.

Let's start with the original visa cancellation.

Tony Burke, the Home Affairs Minister, he's making a bit of a splash because he's taking a very hard line view on visa applications.

Full stop, you know, famously came on my show and said, Kanye West,

he's cancelled, right?

And everyone went, what?

Because of the Hitler song.

Now.

Not surprising you do a Hitler song, just saying.

Yeah, well,

don't sing about Hitler in a nice way because we don't like that.

And we shouldn't, right?

Like, I actually do think that's pretty revolting.

So a Netanyahu government

MP.

Worth remembering that this is a man from a party whose leader is also part of Netanyahu's government.

The leader's also banned from coming to Australia.

The leader is also banned from going to countries like Britain.

So this is a little further down the tree.

The politician's name is Simcha Rothman.

He says things like Jews in Australia are being attacked by jihadists and in Australia's mosques there are incitements to murder Jews.

He says things like the two-state solution has poisoned the minds of the entire world and he believes the UN has actually changed its definition of starvation to launch political attacks against Israel.

It's the hard right of Israel.

I think the other thing to keep in mind, while it is going to be difficult for our diplomats, because it's a tit for tat, so it's not clear to me if this is Australian diplomats who live in Tel Aviv, who sometimes go to the West Bank, or maybe they have to now come in via Jordan, but that's the practical impact.

But it is all part of a coordinated campaign.

Britain has done this.

France has done this.

Other countries have done this.

Australia is just going down the tree.

What I think's interesting, and what I think points to a coordinated campaign.

So Tony Berg was interesting, you know, saying you can't have someone like this might feel, it might encourage others basically to be extremists.

That's what he was saying.

Penny Wong's statement's interesting.

She's accusing Israel of isolating itself.

So the direct quote from her.

Well, the direct quote from her is the Netanyahu government is isolating Israel and undermining international efforts towards peace and a two-state solution.

Prima facie, yes, it is isolating itself because its position on a two-state solution is, you know, that is a shrinking and tinier and tinier minority.

So it's not only that Israel doesn't support recognizing a Palestinian state, that the Israeli parliament voted to annex the West Bank, that when people try to pass laws in Israel, that people should be treated equally regardless of their religion, the Arab MPs who try to pass those laws are berated.

So I do think Penny Wong's got a significant point when she says they're isolating themselves.

But that's more a value judgment.

The underlying thing here,

this is a coordinated campaign to ratchet pressure up on Israel.

If you think Israel is is terrible or wonderful, if you think America and

Australia and Britain are doing the right or wrong thing, this is a coordinated campaign to tell Israel as a...

Stop it.

Well, stop killing children.

That's what the government will tell you privately.

They just say to people, what are you doing?

And the Israeli government representatives will say to them, well, what else do you want us to do?

And the Australian government is saying back, just stop killing children, stop starving people.

So it's a deliberate campaign and Israel, sorry, Australia does think Israel is isolating itself.

Well, and there is a big division now between the coalition and Labour on this.

There is.

The opposition leader Susan Lee has called the rejection of the right-wing Israeli politician as very unusual.

So it sounds like maybe that's muted language.

She's got a point.

It is unusual, but let's go to the unusual in a second because that's a sort of, I think there is a proper discussion to be had about free speech, who we let into the country, maybe some contradictions in some of this.

But on this question, she says it's also very sad that we've allowed our relationship with Israel to deteriorate.

On that, I don't know if she's got such a big case at all.

Look, she's there to provide an alternative position.

When she says,

well, yes, and look, I personally think the opposition need to have a good, long, hard think.

about what are the issues they are going to, you know, go and die on a hill on.

But just as a way of pointing out why they're driving themselves maybe the coalition into a into an ideological dead end i'm going to give you a bit of history but let me do this 20 years ago right 20 years ago the israelis went into a west a refugee camp in the west bank and it was called the pretty sure it was jinin the jenin massacre so a couple of dozen people died

george w bush called for a united nations inquiry They wanted UN people on the ground in the West Bank to say, oh, hang on, a couple of dozen dozen Palestinians died after there'd been some Palestinian attacks.

The whole world needs to stop.

Israel needs to allow a UN inquiry.

I mean, to even conceive of a world in which a couple of dozen Palestinians are killed, and an American president calls for a United Nations-led inquiry to look into that.

So you do need to keep that in perspective.

So when you double back now to 2025 and Susan Lee saying, look, it's unusual and we've allowed the relationship to deteriorate, Israel's body politic has moved really far to the right.

You might think that's the right thing.

You might think that's the wrong thing.

That is a factual observation.

It's body politic, but if you see what's happened on the ground just in the last week, 300,000 people on the streets saying, we want this war to stop.

We want our hostages back.

Don't forget the hostages should come back, but the hostages are in very dangerous territory.

if this Gaza city plan

eventuates.

So I'm not saying there isn't dissent there, but I I do think it's worth the observation that, and sure, there's a lot of opposition to Benjamin Yetan Yahoo, but the centre of Israeli politics is very far to the right from where it has been.

So it is in some ways really remarkable that Australia is cancelling the visas of many Israeli democratically elected politicians.

But, I mean, you only have to look at America, right?

We've got an American president duly elected.

There are masked men snatching people off the streets without identifying themselves.

I mean, politics has changed.

Things have shifted, and this is where the Albanese government finds itself, whether or not you love it or hate it.

So, back to the free speech question, though.

Yes.

Tony Burke's approach.

He's proud of this approach.

And it seems that there is perhaps some electoral real politics dividend here.

I don't think actually.

Do you think there is a dividend?

I think, well, the government believes.

I haven't seen independent evidence to assert it, and I'm a journalist, so I'm not going to to assert that it is, but the government believes.

Thinks this is working.

Yeah.

They think that they're sending a message, particularly because they've balanced it, they think, with, you know, Kanye West.

So, you know, we also will take a strong line on anti-Semitic talk, that they are sending a message that we don't want hatreds from overseas coming here and infecting our populations.

I love the idea that the hatreds are from overseas.

Let's just park that, I think, in other intellectual cul-de-sac.

One way to look at it maybe, don't want to go into all the detail on the rights or wrongs.

There was an altercation outside a hairdressing salon in the very humdrum but very nice suburb of Bentley on Monday in Melbourne.

It has to do with someone who's Israeli being denied service.

So rights or wrongs, I'm not

adjudicating them.

There was a rapid fire demonstration outside that hairdressing salon.

So when the government says we don't want to import these things, the debate, the rancor, the rapidly organized protests, the wildfire that goes across social media for a range of different causes and through a range of different groups, it is already here.

So I see and hear your, I guess, intellectual discussion around free speech.

But then I also think about the government saying, oh, hang on, this stuff is already, and we hate to keep it all Victorian, but Bendigo Writers Festival basically derailed by these very issues.

It's here, it's up, it's running.

People get incredibly fast.

They dial it up to 11

really, really rapidly.

This is the government's rather blunt response.

I'd be interested to know when it begins to grate because I think people are quite happy.

If a government says they're extreme and they shut them down, I mean, we stopped Snoop Dogg coming.

That's complicated as well.

But the guy who's going to be the AFL grand final, he was denied a visa.

He revoked the paperwork, but he was denied a visa 20 years ago.

So the Australian public seem to have shown they've got an appetite.

If a government says to you, we don't like this person, we'll block them, they kind of cop it.

They do cop it, but they didn't always cop it the same way.

So if we think to the 90s, and you and I are old.

No, no, we are old.

We are young enough to have been young in the 90s.

That's right.

Thank you very much.

Very young.

Good Gen X's.

There we are.

There we are.

I recall when there were visa applications that were contentious.

There was huge debate for a long period about.

So I feel like there has been a different world, Picard.

Look at the yeah, look at the hatred and the bile and the anger that spills out of your phone.

I'm holding it up now.

I mean, this is a

different world.

We're talking about a pre-9/11 world, even.

I concede that, but I just, there used to be a more fierce defense of your right to say things I don't like.

Now, in terms of this Israeli far-right MP,

I got to say, I do not think the things he says are acceptable, acceptable,

but I will say I'm not sure his arrival into Australia is going to be, is it going to tear apart social cohesion?

There'll be protests.

I mean, the guy who says a Palestinian state is the first step towards the destruction of Israel and the UN's making up stuff about starvation.

Again, whether or not you think that's right or wrong, there'll be protests.

Okay.

But people are already saying that, right?

There's no end of people in Australia saying precisely the same things that Simcha Rothman has said and wants to say.

I do think it's as simple as the federal government going, oh, well, there'll be another protest if that person's allowed to come, so we don't want to shut it down.

Yeah.

I understand your discomfort.

And it's not because I want it to be a good idea.

I just want to be clear because I don't want to get cancelled today.

Because you want to embrace the idea that we engage.

Yeah, I'm troubled by the idea that

we're all cancelled.

Do we engage?

Even the Kanye West.

Look, I don't like the Hitler song.

I think I've never heard it actually, but I don't need to hear it to know it's bad.

It's called the Hitler song, so I'm assuming it's not for me.

But again, all of the cancelling.

Anyway, let's just park.

I'm just, that's a broad thing.

Same with the Writers Festival.

I'm not a big silencer.

That's why I let you talk.

All right.

I want to segue very dramatically.

Yeah, I thought you'd like that.

Okay.

First official day of the three-day economic roundtable.

It's so exciting.

I know you're excited.

What does productivity mean, Patricia?

It means getting more more out of your working hours.

It means achieving more.

Rewind.

Number one, productivity means we're no longer wearing

hair shirts and subsistence farming.

And

if Danielle Wood has ever achieved anything, she has introduced the idea that we need to vomit up the hairballs in the economy.

I thought you said that yesterday.

Hair shirts and hairballs.

And it's very, I think about cats coming up.

That's right.

Well, I actually think of Basil Faulty vomiting like a cat in Faulty Towers.

That's what I think of with Army.

Okay, so so she wants us to vomit up the bad stuff.

Let's vomit up what I think of today.

First day, the Reserve Bank Governor Michelle Bullock will be speaking, as we've been flagging.

Productivity is a problem.

She'll talk about the global headwinds.

The tariff issue, no doubt, will come up because that's so unpredictable.

The nation is waiting with bated breath and not falling asleep while she talks.

Right, so what's today all about?

What do they want to get out of this?

Is it clear yet?

Not to me.

It's not clear.

So let's go to the public stuff, then the private stuff.

So you've got Katie Gallagher, the finance minister, doing the rounds this morning on the ABC.

So she says publicly, she's struck by the level of buy-in.

I'll just read the quote.

I think the level of buy-in in interests gives you a sense of the engagement that's been had and the willingness to put shoulders to the wheel to genuinely talk.

So that's so far so boring and anodyna bureaucratic.

I tell you what is going on amongst all of the pre-discussion, because there's a whole lot of little roundtables that lead up to this formal roundtable.

I think the government is actually really happy that everybody who comes to them lobbying with ideas and budget changes, spend this, tax that, now is in the same position as the government because those people who usually just come and lob requests to government now need to lob those requests at the people who disagree with them.

And there's a real feeling, I reckon, and it goes as high as the PM and the Treasurer, of them saying, see, look what I have to put up with.

Someone comes to me with an idea and I have to work out how this squares in the budget.

And I've had a few people say to them, say to me, sorry, they are now negotiating with each other.

They have to understand the trade-offs.

Even the regulators are talking to each other in ways that they haven't spoken to each other.

They haven't done that in the past.

So I think the government's really ecstatic about that.

And I do think as well.

take you back to the crucial i think there's a crucial quote from the treasurer's press club speech the election mandate is the foundation and not the destination right?

He wants to build on what they've promised.

This allows him to chip away and build on those ideas.

And like I said to you last week, this is getting other people to build the consensus for them because they just insist governments can't do it on their own.

Not everyone in the government is really into this.

No, that's true.

There are people in the government, senior people in the government, who think this has all got a bit...

Out of control.

Yep.

It's all a bit silly.

It's got too big.

Do you think they're right?

I think they have some good points.

They're not entirely right, no.

But their view is that we've just won an election.

We've got a really big mandate.

That's not a mandate to do a whole bunch of stuff we didn't mention at the election.

They really believe this.

Like, for instance, productivity, not raised in the election, didn't talk about that.

And now we're all apparently doing this.

So there is a view that this is the treasurer getting ahead of himself.

Why would that view exist?

Well, I think it does go to internal issues in the Labor Party, different views about Jim Chalmers and his ambitions and the way that he wants to proceed.

So, you know, on the label, it says politics now and not just only about policy.

Just to let our listeners know the complexity of what's going on here.

There is not internal, there is a lot of debate in the cabinet table about just what's going on here and are we getting a little ahead of ourselves.

We did not get elected on a, we're going to have this big manifesto on productivity.

The reason you asked me, are they right?

I think they're right that they didn't get elected on that.

I think they're right that, you know, they want to landslide on another, on a different agenda, a much more modest one.

But I think productivity is, I think that was actually a flaw in their

campaign and that productivity is a genuine crisis.

You know, look at the downgrade by the RBA.

I do think there's a sense of urgency.

What you can get from fixing some of this is enormous for Australian living standards, and it's incumbent on a good government to.

So I'm kind of, like always, somewhere in the middle on these two theses.

But I just want to note that I do think that's a vibe and it'll be interesting to see how that, when it goes back to the cabinet.

What happens?

Yeah, because I don't think everyone's going to go, yeah, let's sign up to the big stuff.

There will be a little bit of caution.

I think the government are entirely aware of those tensions.

I think they feel like they've had, they've they've thrashed out the issues before at the cabinet table.

I think the Treasury and the PM think, oh yeah, we know how to control this process.

And there's certainly no sign that that internal process is out of control.

I think it's really important if we try to look forward and try to think about what are the issues that Jim Chalners wants to chip away at.

I think it's really obvious that industrial relations is not there.

They're not going to try to expand that.

I think the Qantas case also sort of reinforces the view that the job done on industrial relations.

They don't have an appetite there.

I think that one of the big issues to watch, Danielle Wood is pushing and pushing this idea of a turnover tax, that you tax the Netflixes and the banks and Kohl's and Apple on how much cash they've got, as opposed to taxing their profit.

I don't think she will get there, but I think the idea that you somehow change corporate tax rates so the monopolists, which is the banks in the supermarkets, don't get an advantage, but the medium-sized businesses are in some ways encouraged to spend more.

I think that's definitely where the government, that's what the government sees as the prize.

And one of the things to really keep an eye on, all of those ideas proposed by the Productivity Commission, keep an eye on this, they are draft reports.

They are not final reports.

Good point.

So she has to finalise them.

Danielle Wood, who we mentioned, she of the hairballs that need to be vomited up.

She has to finalise those Productivity Commission reports.

That's the top-level think tank advising the government with draft reports.

The government looks at the feedback.

They've got other people thrashing out the ideas.

They're looking at where they can get consensus.

They're not touching the third rail of industrial relations.

I think you need to keep an eye on that and also keep an eye to the tensions in the government.

It is always the case.

Keating Hawke, Costello Howard.

Tensions are good.

Yeah, Costello Howard and also Brown Blair, the CBGBs.

I wish we'd had a conflict like that, but we'll get into that another day.

Prime ministers want to store political capital, treasurers want to spend it.

So that is always there, and it's the thing to keep your eye on.

And what you want is there's always an element of personality because that's the human condition, but you want it to be a policy contest, not just an ego.

No personality contest.

And unfortunately, the ego is a big one in the political sphere.

Apparently, politicians have egos.

So that's the TBGBs, the Tony Blairs and the Gordon Browns.

All of their minions were fighting out the personality fight.

That's what you want to stay a million miles away from.

This government's nowhere near that, but that's a real example of a deterioration to pretty good political minds getting elected victory democracy.

With that tax,

the turnover for lowering it is up to a billion dollars.

One idea I've heard is going higher than that, so that not as many businesses get

into that kind of space of paying that 5% turnover tax, the extra.

So there's ways

of sort of muting the level of distress from the big end of town.

Just watch that space.

I don't think they're there yet.

Hey, we must end on what is a huge international story as we've been reporting at the ABC.

It's Tuesday.

We've been really covering it heavily.

And that's those images on our screens of the Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky flanked by European leaders, Francis Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer from the UK.

Special Evander Leyne from the EU Commission.

Huge, really impressive.

Friedrich Kemerz, the chief.

They all came.

Sort of felt very historic to me to

see Europe united like this, turning up to Washington.

And now, coming out of that meeting, it wasn't a dressing down of Zelensky, a humiliation of Zelensky.

I think all of the optics and the fact that the Europeans were there, I do think had a big influence on that.

My own analysis, watching the way that's come out, Zelensky kind of half wore a suit.

That's been a big thing.

Really important to note two things.

The idea that Vladimir Putin gets to posed with the American president in front of a sign that says peace is actually basically obscene, given the war that Russia launched.

So that is a stage.

And that is a way of getting into, we just need to get America back to the start line.

There is complete uncertainty about whether or not America will make sure that Ukraine's, whatever the borders get agreed to be, that America will be there, the so-called security guarantees.

Just the fact that Donald Trump, after this meeting, is posting on Truth Social, his social media company, about security guarantees is a victory.

It's always worth remembering Anne Coulter's observation of Donald Trump that he is just like a sofa.

He bears the impression of the last person who sat on him.

So all of the European leaders sat on him.

I had an amazing experience.

I listened to their before meeting press conference without knowing who was talking.

And just hearing the French of Emmanuel Macron and then, you know, the German accent of Friedrich Mertz, but how clearly and cleverly they made their points.

The EU president was making the point about the kidnapped Ukrainian children.

Keir Starmer was making the point about something close to Article 5.

Giorgio Maloney from Italy backed that up.

Friedrich Mertz made sure a couple of times to say, you've got to have a ceasefire.

You can't just go where Donald Trump wants to go to a final peace agreement.

It is a coordinated, an amazingly well coordinated bit of diplomacy.

Key point though, we're just trying to get back to where we were on the first Tuesday in November.

We're just trying to make sure that America is actually a part of NATO and one of NATO's most important missions is to make sure Russia doesn't try it again with any other country.

But it'll be I mean it's crucial where it goes and we haven't mentioned actually

the Australian response because Amanda Rishworth, government minister saying yet, okay, peacekeepers, potentially we we would have a look at it.

The Green Senator, Nick McKim, saying it's way too early to start talking about peacekeepers, which on the face of it is true, but also the way these things work, it's great if the countries doing the work like Europe know what other countries like Australia are thinking.

The shift, though, is instead of Peter Dutton saying, no, this is a thought bubble, when Anthony Albanese during the last term said we'd think about peacekeepers, Peter Dutton called it a thought bubble.

It is a change to have James Patterson, the Victorian Liberal Senator, saying the opposition should certainly consider that if we are asked.

Yes.

So open to peacekeepers.

It's a big shift and it happened almost immediately after the election that they kind of argued across the board from the wets, so that's the moderates to the hawks.

We don't have enough wets and dries references.

We don't.

That's why I'm trying to insert them.

Thank you.

You looked happy when I said it.

Well, I'm here for that.

They all agree on this.

So it's a consistent view.

And it showed me that this was, well, a few people have said it to me too, it was very much a captain's call by Peter Dutton.

He's very isolated in that view and so they've really pivoted as soon as it's over.

And it was really inconsistent with his character too.

It was very odd.

It showed he was losing, I think, his political radar, which he was at the end.

It was very inconsistent with the rest of his political life.

It was very hard to understand what was going on.

He was trying to differentiate.

Anyway, who cares?

He lost his seat.

He's over.

One more really obscure, very Melbourne reference, if you will indulge me.

Sorry, we have listeners in Melbourne.

I saw on the weekend a film at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

It was a five-hour, 40-minute documentary, five hours and 40 minutes, filmed on an iPhone of Russian journalists trying to keep working in the months leading up to the invasion of Ukraine.

And it was one of the most gripping, most moving.

I felt like I was in the timeline.

These young women, most of whom are in their 20s, just desperately trying to get around Putin's bureaucratic but really evil press restrictions.

One example, whenever I say my name, Raf Epstein, on Russian radio, I'd need to say, by the way, I am a foreign agent employed by a foreign entity, even if that is not true.

Which leads me to the name of the film because it's called My Undesirable Friends.

It's the first part of a two-parta.

It is five hours and 40 minutes, but I just watch these women just trying to do what you and I take for granted every day.

And they have now, of course, everybody in that film film has been forced to leave the country.

So just taking for granted the freedoms that we have in this country and keep your eyes on that.

I'm still trying to get past.

Did you sit for five and a half hours?

Okay.

I'm not capable, like physically.

I think what you've just described, just want to be clear, is super compelling and really important.

My body couldn't do it.

So can I make this plea?

And I don't know if this is going to make the final edit.

However, if my thought was, there's no way I'm watching five-hour documentary about Russian journalists.

No way.

Stories well told on a phone.

It's filmed on an iPhone, but it's such an important story.

And any story well told, I tell you, it blew out of the water.

Any Netflix show, any Apple show I have seen for the last year or two.

I want to plug it for two reasons.

One, My Undesirable Friends, because it's quite remarkable.

Two, it's just a real reminder, because I watch that.

They sit in studios that you and I sit in.

It's the same technology.

They're doing the same things.

They are fighting such an immensely different and much, much bigger fight.

And the sad postscript to their film, they're not there.

They've all had to leave the country.

So when you see Vladimir Putin on your TV screen with Donald Trump, I really think that's worth keeping in mind.

And that's the challenge for our policymakers and our politicians, how to respond to that.

Because it's, I mean, of course, if it was easy to fix, it would be fixed.

But I am also all up for, go and see an immersive documentary, my friends.

Change your life.

No, no, I'm all in favour of it.

Next time I go, when I go and watch the repeat, I'll take you with me, okay?

The logistics are just still.

There was a 10-minute break.

Got a chocolate bar and a glass of water.

10 minutes is probably not enough for my

breastforce leg syndrome.

Okay,

Raph, always love talking to you.

Thank you.

And tomorrow, David Spears is back.

We will take your questions on Thursday.

Mel Clark is my co-host for the party room at abc.net.au.

See ya.

Absolute pleasure, PK.

Great to be here.