Did Sussan Ley overreach on 'shirtgate'?

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Speaker 5 Today the Australian people have voted for Australian values.

Speaker 6 Government is always formed in a sensible centre, but our Liberal Party reflects a range of views.

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Speaker 4 Hello and welcome to the party room. I'm Patricia Carvellis.
I'm joining you from Ngunnawal Country in Parliament House in Canberra.

Speaker 1 And I'm Mel Clark. I'm also on Ngunnawal Country in our Parliament House studios here.
PK, great to have you here while I am filling in for Fran Kelly for a little bit longer.

Speaker 4 Oh well you're just here. Come on.
You're just like, you're literally just in the office.

Speaker 1 Omnipresent. So you can see that you're always here.
Yank me into the studio.

Speaker 4 Okay, so Parliament's back this week. It has been a kind of big and kind of small week.
I feel like I can say both of those things, even though they're at odds.

Speaker 4 And interestingly, a week in the Parliament, which I found kind of curious, sort of the feeling of it, without the Prime Minister, who I have to say...

Speaker 4 Whatever people say about the Prime Minister, when he's not here, it's all a bit lackluster.

Speaker 1 Well, he is the ultimate parliamentarian as well. You know, he's a Prime Minister who really thrives on the running of Parliament.

Speaker 1 And when we do have, you know, consequential matters before the Parliament that are being debated at the moment, but being done without the Prime Minister there to sort of command the direction in question time, there's definitely a different vibe.

Speaker 1 But there's plenty going on while he's overseas. This is the moment the federal government is introducing its environment reforms to the parliament after a week of drip feeding details to us.

Speaker 1 We've now got the bill and acquired a much better understanding of what the government is trying to do, but still a really big question about how it's going to play out.

Speaker 1 So we should go through the policy, but also how the politics are playing out on this one. We've got the coalition continuing to

Speaker 1 torture itself

Speaker 1 over net zero. They're having party room meetings discussing it.
It's true.

Speaker 1 We've got the Bureau of Meteorology, because let's face it, weather is the most important thing in this country.

Speaker 4 That's my favourite topic.

Speaker 1 And changes to the Bureau of Meteorology website has been a key issue that the Environment Minister has had to weigh in on at the same time as he's trying to reform the nation's environment laws.

Speaker 1 Inflation figures out, PK, that's pretty big news as well. We should make sure we talk about those figures while Anthony Albanese is overseas and who knows what t-shirts he packed in his suitcase.

Speaker 4 We're going to pause that, but that is my favourite story of the week.

Speaker 1 I know it is, PK. We'll get to it.

Speaker 4 Mel's really worried about my mental health.

Speaker 4 I'm good, it's okay day. I'm going to talk t-shirt later, but yeah, okay, let's talk about the serious stuff.
Also, you know, the cozy meeting with Trump and, you know.

Speaker 1 And what's happening between Trump and Xi? Because let's face it, for all of the meetings Anthony Albanese is having. The one between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping is the one we really need to face.

Speaker 4 That's right. And we'll bring you more of that, you know, later because that's breaking a bit later.
We're recording on a Thursday morning.

Speaker 4 Look, I'm very excited to say that Claire Armstrong is in the studio with us to discuss all this. Claire, your first time on the podcast as a member of the ABC family.

Speaker 2 I'm very excited to be here. My first week, no less.

Speaker 1 What an honor.

Speaker 4 Yeah, well, it's you are the perfect. So Claire Armstrong is now doing sort of our online digital reporting for politics, and it's very exciting to have you here.
Okay, we outlined the big stuff.

Speaker 4 But Mel, it is to be, you know, I want to talk about all the other stuff that I'm obsessed with, but I understand. Mel's a total nerd.
She's so obsessed with the EPBC Act.

Speaker 4 No, I know you do, and you should. This bill has been unveiled.

Speaker 1 Look, this is a very big moment. And just as a reminder, these are the laws that are designed to protect our national environment.

Speaker 1 And it is meant to ensure that we are looking after threatened species, that we're protecting the biodiversity in a country that has so many unique species and ecosystems.

Speaker 1 So this is really critical legislation.

Speaker 1 And we've had a very long and protracted debate over the last five years about how to update the laws that are now terribly out of date and aren't working to protect the environment and aren't working to support reasonable development proposals.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 The government, having its second crack at this, having failed in the first term, Murray Watt was brought in to be the person to strike the political deal to get this done.

Speaker 1 Somehow, anyway, make it happen was the remit given to Murray Watt as Environment Minister.

Speaker 1 We've got the legislation out now and look, it's only been publicly released this morning and it runs for more than 1,400 pages.

Speaker 1 So I won't confess to have seen it all because there's a lot of detail in the world.

Speaker 4 I thought you were going to claim to have read 1,400 pages and I thought, give the woman a payrise.

Speaker 1 I do not have those kind of speed reading abilities. And even if I did, if you've seen legislation, it's quite impenetrable.
It takes a lot of work.

Speaker 1 So there's still a lot to go through, but I do think we have a lot of answers now about the big picture questions that the government is facing.

Speaker 1 The government has put forward a range of measures that are designed to assist business in getting smoother approvals.

Speaker 1 The streamlining to reduce duplication between the federal government and state and territory processes. There is a way forward for that.

Speaker 1 It can also include streamlining not necessarily at a statewide level, but at a project level or a regional level, which is really interesting.

Speaker 1 We know that there is this traffic light system, which is meant to have sort of red, orange, and green lights.

Speaker 1 And they're really sort of talking up the red light factor to say where there are unacceptable impacts, that there's a big red stoplight, and the environment group should be happy about that, is the message from the government.

Speaker 1 There's the ministerial powers to fast track where there's nationally significant reasons to do so.

Speaker 4 Which would be, sorry to interrupt, Mel, but something like critical minerals, right? Like something where there is a national interest where we really want to kind of get things moving.

Speaker 2 Or defence projects as well.

Speaker 1 And this is what's been set out in some of the legislation. There's a lot of questions, well, what does nationally significant mean? Yeah, because

Speaker 1 memorandum,

Speaker 1 it goes to defence and security matters. But this is answering a lot of questions about, well, what are the definitions we're talking about?

Speaker 1 And that's what a lot of the environment groups have been concerned about.

Speaker 1 I guess one of the things I want to point out that I think has been a little overlooked in this discussion is while we're having a focus on well what's the definition of an unacceptable impact?

Speaker 1 You know Murray Watt's come out saying well if there's action that would seriously impair the viability of a species. Okay that sounds pretty strong.
Sounds.

Speaker 1 But there's also the question in the legislation of but what's the threshold for the minister in that?

Speaker 1 It's all good and well to say well we need to consider what might be seriously impacting the viability of a species, but must that threshold be applied, or must it be considered, or may it be considered?

Speaker 1 And from those who've had an early read at the legislation and have been able to go through those 1400 pages that I haven't looked at yet, what they're telling me is that there's a lot of may consider or could consider, but there's not much must.

Speaker 1 Right, so should.

Speaker 4 So it's lukewarm in terms of what it compels the minister to do.

Speaker 1 The threshold there is as important as what the standard is as well. So there's a, in the substance of the policy itself, there's a lot of wriggle room.

Speaker 1 But some of that, I think, is quite deliberate in the strategy.

Speaker 1 And Claire, I know you've been watching closely as we've seen how the coalition and the Greens have been responding to the little bits of information that the government is dribbling out.

Speaker 1 I think some of that wriggle room is quite deliberate, right?

Speaker 1 Because this gives the government the ability to negotiate changes with either the coalition or the Greens to try and get one or the other over the line.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, this is the issue that the government has, not just on this piece of legislation, but anything they're doing this term, is it is not going to become law unless either the Greens or the Coalition support them in the Senate.

Speaker 2 The interesting thing about this proposal and the way that some people in government frame it is, in reality,

Speaker 2 if you imagine there's a line and if the bill got to that line it's something that the greens would support or it's something that the coalition would support the gap between where the coalition are now and where that line is is actually much smaller than the gap from where the greens are and where their line is the issue being the internals of the coalition at the moment are such that it is you know there is still hope i think from the government that it is the coalition that they do a deal with here that's in large part because that offers a lot of stability around these laws.

Speaker 2 You've got the two kind of main parties of government who are saying to business and to environment groups, this is where we stand.

Speaker 1 It reduces the possibility that we get the coalition coming into coalition.

Speaker 2 Stripping things out and changing.

Speaker 4 And it gives business a certain sense of certainty that these two major parties are locked in.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 But the issue is there's a belief that that's probably not going to be, that the current sort of shadow cabinet is probably not going to be able to some kind of consensus to make that deal at the moment.

Speaker 2 I mean, it wasn't even debated in shadow cabinet this week. I mean the bill is being introduced today.

Speaker 2 So given all of that, those bits of wriggle room, you know, it may actually be there for the Greens' benefit now.

Speaker 1 That's super interesting. So we've got the coalition closer to where the government is.
but divided. The Greens are further away, but are a bit more united, and that can make negotiating easier.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because they're all locked in. You don't have to sort of struggle.

Speaker 1 And I think that Murray Watt has left quite a bit of wriggle room to negotiate with the Greens, even though the bill at the moment probably sits a little closer to where the coalition is.

Speaker 1 I was really interested with Murray Watt's comments this morning

Speaker 1 where he was talking about the current exemption that there is for

Speaker 1 native forest logging. That's currently exempt from

Speaker 1 the EPBC Act as it currently stands.

Speaker 1 Now, in the new legislation, the national environmental standards are meant to apply where there are regional forestry agreements so that's where sort of separate arrangements have been struck.

Speaker 1 But he was quite loose in his commitment to that aspect of it.

Speaker 9 The commitment is that we would apply the national environmental standards to regional forestry agreements under which native forestry occurs. That was the recommendation from Graham Samuel.

Speaker 9 So that's the direction we're intending to go. I am aware that some of the...

Speaker 1 Now if you think about how Murray Watts talked about something like the climate trigger, he's been quite definitive in saying we're not having a climate trigger, which is one of the Greens' key demands.

Speaker 1 But the Greens' other key demand is making sure that native forest logging is subjected to environmental standards. And on that, his language is that's the direction we're intending to go.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of wriggle room in that, PK. So Murray Watts giving himself room to manoeuvre.

Speaker 4 Well, and he has to, right? Like, let's be frank about this. He's got two pathways.
In some ways, they're quite vastly different, I think, you know, on sort of

Speaker 4 ideological principled grounds two pathways one a very mainstream one that I think particularly with our pragmatic Prime Minister who don't you worry he might be overseas but knows exactly what's going on he's like highly consulted in all of this you know hotline bling happens to Albanese is what I hear so Albanese's writing instructions because he literally gives them this way is you know like deliver this and not in a way that agitates business overly I think right

Speaker 1 and WA and all of that.

Speaker 4 But equally, right, like Labor has this wicked problem, of course, with its environmental base and its inner city base. So they still actually have a bit of an issue.

Speaker 4 So he's been given a bit of leeway to kind of be vague to try and land this deal. My view now is that I'm just going to put it out there.

Speaker 4 Won't happen this week, but I think he will land a deal. I think there's going to be, I think he's, do you agree, Claire? I think it's looking to me,

Speaker 4 I think the politics has been managed really well.

Speaker 4 Hats off. The government's so much better at politics this term so far.

Speaker 2 Yes, I think what's really interesting about, I mean, hats off to you, Mel, for your analysis of the substance of the bill.

Speaker 2 But the politics is what's really captured me in the last few weeks in the lead up to this.

Speaker 2 The way that the government is really trying to put the creation of an EPA as almost like the PR front of the rest of this incredibly dense yet important bill.

Speaker 2 An EPA is something that the public understands. I mean, it's quite a tangible thing.
It's the feature of a Simpsons movie.

Speaker 2 You know, people have a conceptual understanding of this idea of an environmental cop on the beat. Australia doesn't have one.
The government wants to create one.

Speaker 2 That has given members of the caucus backbenches in these inner-city seats that they may have recently taken off the Greens or be continually fighting challenges from the Greens, something substantive to talk about that people can understand.

Speaker 2 And I think the politics around this,

Speaker 2 and it is, you know, the government is a lot better now.

Speaker 2 I would say it's almost the lessons of the Housing Australia Future Fund debate last term are now being immediately applied to what could become quite a problematic wedge issue for the Greens if they are painted once again as wreckers.

Speaker 1 I think you're absolutely right.

Speaker 1 The politics has been par excellence, and I think that Anthony Albanese's selection of Murray Watt for this role has paid off in what he wants to achieve, which is to get an outcome.

Speaker 1 However, I think the desire to get an outcome is overriding policy principles. I think they're far less concerned about what deal they land up with.
They just want the deal.

Speaker 4 Yes, I think Murray Watt's a great performer, you know, really strategic, smart, whatever. But I just, I've said this before on this pod.
I just, you know, I cannot not say it. Oh, come on.

Speaker 4 Like, he was given the job after she'd done a lot of the groundwork a lot of the fights were had so i just think like you know a bit of credit of course but like let's not go crazy guys like well particularly on the climate change right like tanya had essentially got the greens and with sarah hanson young obviously part of that being a pragmatist herself to a point where it was pretty obvious that whatever version of these laws ultimately was put to the parliament by labor a climate trigger was never going to be exactly claim and i think that needs to be you know just that's not to say what's what's not doing a good job but also

Speaker 1 the job hasn't been done yet well it hasn't but it looks to be doing done well so let's just let's just quickly go through what happens now so the bill's being introduced into parliament today on Thursday we know that the coalition and the greens both want to see this go to a committee so where it can be examined the question is how long will that take and what can they agree on Murray Watt wants that to be done so that they can vote on it in the last week of the sitting both the coalition and the Greens are talking about pushing it out to early next year.

Speaker 1 Claire, what do you think is going to happen with the timing?

Speaker 2 I don't know that the government's going to get its way with the length of the inquiry being a short, sharp one month.

Speaker 2 You know, then we can bring the bill back to Parliament before the end of the year. But also, inquiries don't actually have to be finished if you do a deal in the Senate.

Speaker 2 That, to me, seems like a fairly likely outcome, that the politics are a bit raw at the moment and no one's wanting to give too much ground, for example, conceding on giving them a short inquiry.

Speaker 2 But we could very likely, I think, see a situation, as you say, Mel, because there is a very strong desire from the government for a deal that they have some of early hurdles around these processes now, but we ultimately are hearing the bells an awful lot in the last week of Parliament sitting because they are ramming this bill through the Senate.

Speaker 4 Alright, so we'll see how that ramming goes next week. Let's go now to the Coalition briefly.

Speaker 4 I mean it's it's very linked to the way they've been playing their hand on environment laws, which is, you know, kind of confusing because they have these internal issues around things like the environment, around things like net zero, which comes to a bit of a head tomorrow.

Speaker 4 So we're recording this Thursday. On Friday, the Liberals are having a long meeting on energy policy.

Speaker 1 Oh, to be a fly on the wall for those speeches.

Speaker 1 But PK, according to the coalition, it's just another meeting. They have lots of them.
This is their ninth one. It's not a big deal.

Speaker 4 Nothing to see.

Speaker 4 Nothing to see. Other than everyone positioning, of course.
We've got Matt Canavan who presented the Nats review on the target to the party room.

Speaker 4 You know, clearly the Nats, I think it's almost done and dusted that they want to move from net zero. Like, seriously, do you see?

Speaker 1 I think the only question is,

Speaker 1 and as I think David Littleproud has hinted towards, is they can't just say, well, net zero is a problem. It can't come at any cost.
They need to be able to offer an alternative.

Speaker 1 And I think they're still trying to figure out what that alternative is that they can put forward as being behind. And that, again, requires finding unity.

Speaker 1 So I think that's probably where they're at for the nationals. But the Liberals...

Speaker 1 Claire, where do we think the mood and the sentiment is in the Liberal Party?

Speaker 2 I think the Liberals are headed for a worst-case scenario, which is

Speaker 2 net zero with no timeline, which does not help them with the hemorrhage. Yeah.
What is that? Well,

Speaker 2 it's this. Well, it's this, it's like having an assignment that you know you eventually have to do, but you're not obviously not going to do it.
You can do it before you die or

Speaker 1 interventions to get it done fast.

Speaker 2 And this is a worst-case scenario because in the 10-second grab when Susan Lee or whoever gets asked, so have you dumped net zero? The only thing you can say is no, but.

Speaker 2 And as soon as the people on the right flank of the coalition who are, you know, looking at One Nation and other alternatives hear the but, they're out, it's not the no rather,

Speaker 2 it's not ditched, that's not enough for them.

Speaker 2 And as soon as the people that have obviously swung quite heavily toward the teals in the inner cities hear the but, they're also not going to take this seriously.

Speaker 1 So it's the ultimate compromise policy that no one's really hearing. Leaves them stranded.

Speaker 1 I feel like this is the if that is the outcome that we see, it's a little bit reminiscent of the nuclear policy as well, which was, well people disagree.

Speaker 1 So, what's the policy we can find that sort of accommodates everyone and keeps everyone happy?

Speaker 1 If that's the process that's going through again, then I think you're just putting off the reckoning for another period because ultimately there are irreconcilable views about this.

Speaker 1 At some point, doesn't it have to be thrashed out and someone wins and someone loses?

Speaker 2 I think so. I think, you know, we're going to get

Speaker 1 democracy works.

Speaker 2 We're going to get to, I think, discussions of Susie Lee's leadership style when we talk about shirtgate.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Waiting the whole podcast.

Speaker 2 But to

Speaker 2 say something that has clearly been a conscientious choice by Susan since she took the leadership, I don't think any coalition MP will pretend that consultation was high on the agenda in the last term of the opposition under Peter Dutton.

Speaker 2 Susan has set up these backbench committees that are designed to specifically consult with backbenchers on any myriad of issues.

Speaker 2 I mean, this committee that is holding the meeting on Friday that Danteen is going to be attending to sort of hear people out and answer questions is actually the Australian Economy Committee and it consults on everything from, you know, yes, energy, but you know, anything else in between, the housing, treasury, all of these issues.

Speaker 2 These committees that Susan has set up in addition to the kind of working groups, I think there's about three or four different variants of of climate and energy related working groups across the NATS and the Libs at the moment.

Speaker 2 That is a marker, I think, of her leadership. The issue she was now facing is that there are plenty of her colleagues who are starting to feel that being heard is only the first step.

Speaker 2 Seeing signs of their beliefs or their contributions being acted upon and incorporated into policy is, I think, why this Friday meeting has now become so ruptured because people are now starting to think, wait, is this just everyone getting their five minutes on the soapbox and they'll continue with whatever plan was in the works prior to this consultation?

Speaker 4 Yes, she's consultative, but it is ultimately about where you land that matters for voters.

Speaker 4 I just want to talk more broadly about what I think has actually been the biggest drew this week, which we've kind of buried, but we shouldn't ever bury it, which is the shock inflation figure.

Speaker 8 A lot of Australians are still under pressure. I've acknowledged that.
And that's reflected in the numbers today, Mr Speaker, as well.

Speaker 4 Let's just be really clear about this.

Speaker 4 This is no good for the government.

Speaker 4 This inflation figure that was delivered, annual headline inflation jumping to 3.2%, that's up from 2.1% in the June quarter. That's like seismic as a political story.

Speaker 4 It's obviously an economic story, but the political ramifications are huge. It completely kind of dampens any expectation that we're going to get a rate cut.
And of course, there have been a couple.

Speaker 4 People want more because people have been doing it tough.

Speaker 4 and it goes if I can segue beautifully try to to the leadership because as far as I am concerned my friends the only thing the Liberal Party should be talking about this week is inflation and the price of electricity and other goods not which we'll get to in a moment because we're obsessed t-shirts right and and desperate to get us to the t-shirts I am

Speaker 2 and inflation should be their only attack seriously politically and they have a perfect vehicle for it in the discussion this week around the future viability of Tomago, Australia's biggest aluminium smelter looking like

Speaker 2 one of its biggest users of single users of electricity, essentially saying it's come to crunch time on the price of electricity.

Speaker 2 This has, you know, the government will argue, national security implications in terms of aluminium in some circles being considered somewhat of a critical

Speaker 1 debate.

Speaker 2 But local jobs, all of these these other issues.

Speaker 2 And the coalition, yeah, not only have the data from the ABS, they have a real-world example of what happens when you do have runaway costs on things like energy.

Speaker 2 You lose industry, you lose capacity, you lose productivity.

Speaker 1 A political party has never suffered by focusing on the hit pocket. I think that's very fair to say across Australia and internationally in an experience of Western democracy.

Speaker 4 That's right. So let's go to where we need to go.
Because like you would have seen me jump out out of, you know, we're working near each other now. Like I jumped out of my seat.

Speaker 4 I was like, finally, I've arrived. I've been in Canberra all week.
I've been waiting for something amazing to happen. And it did.

Speaker 4 Before question time on Tuesday, Susan Lee, the opposition leader of our nation, stood up using her to rebuke. the Prime Minister for wearing a Joy Division t-shirt.

Speaker 4 at the end of his trip as he was coming down the stairs from the US.

Speaker 6 Australians expect their Prime Minister to show judgment, respect, and leadership. Instead, we have got the opposite.

Speaker 6 Arriving back in Australia from his overseas trip, the Prime Minister stepped off the plane proudly wearing a t-shirt with the name of a band, Joy Division, whose origins are steeped in anti-Semitism.

Speaker 6 The Prime Minister chose to parade an image derived from hatred and suffering. This is not a slip of judgment, and he cannot claim ignorance.

Speaker 2 Honestly, it's probably one of the the most famous album covers in

Speaker 2 ever.

Speaker 2 But the band name originates, it's a reference to a name that came up in a book written after World War II that described these wings or these sort of groups in several concentration camps where the women were used as sexual slaves for the Nazis.

Speaker 2 It was called the Joy Division. The context here is of course that the punk movement was all about shock and value and that's not to excuse.
I think

Speaker 2 one of the band members later in life said, you know, if I had my time again, I maybe wouldn't have made that decision for a name, but that is the origins of the name.

Speaker 4 They were trying to be edgy, I think, misfire, but yeah, trying to be edgy.

Speaker 2 And I think the important point in all of this is this may be new to people, you know, who have been fans of the band forever, but it wasn't new to the Prime Minister because

Speaker 1 this had been

Speaker 2 put to him on a podcast a couple of years ago, and this is the impetus for everything that followed in terms of Susan deciding to say this wasn't a moment of ignorance, you're aware. The problem being

Speaker 2 he had walked down the stairs on that plane five days previous.

Speaker 2 There was a lot of comment at the time about his sartorial choice.

Speaker 1 And he was wearing a t-shirt, not a suit. And he looked a bit scruffy, joyed of visiting.

Speaker 1 It's just that you're out in a t-shirt.

Speaker 1 Bit of both, okay.

Speaker 2 You know, his music choices, all of that, but not in this context.

Speaker 2 Fast forward to this week, this very pointed statement is made at a pretty point in the parliament where a lot of people are paying attention, just before question time

Speaker 2 Susan makes this point

Speaker 2 thinking well my understanding is there were members of the Australian Jewish community that raised this with their office I'm sure there were electorate officers that got emails about this

Speaker 2 her decision to to platform it in this way and to be as

Speaker 2 I guess behave in the way that she did ended up backfiring essentially. She had a lineup of nationals yesterday who were like, this is ridiculous.

Speaker 2 I mean Bridget Mackenzie, who's very very pro-Israel, was like, I love Deundovision, what's going on?

Speaker 2 But even there are a lot of liberals. Ted O'Brien went out of his way to basically not say anything about this, certainly not back up.

Speaker 1 He had a plan of chattel

Speaker 1 behind the microphones of like, oh, if I wear a black Sabbath t-shirt, I'm not a pagan.

Speaker 1 How much do we read into the name of something and what we attribute it?

Speaker 2 And what it comes down to is judgment. Sorry.
Coming off the back of.

Speaker 1 Judgment. Kenya Lee literally fell off her chair at that point.

Speaker 4 That time. how do we use our platforms? Yes.

Speaker 2 And whether or not concern had been raised, whether or not it was a significant enough issue to then raise it five days after it became a thing.

Speaker 2 The problem here is that everyone is not always listening to the opposition. In fact, I would say the default is that people do not listen to the opposition.

Speaker 2 So when you're trying to make yourself heard, when you're choosing joy division teacher, not looming inflation figures or the closure of a major employer in this country or any of these other issues, that speaks to a concern around judgment.

Speaker 4 That's right. It's all about judgment.
And also there's a sort of different layer here for me as well.

Speaker 4 Firstly, I've got so many angles. Sorry, I'm quite, I know you think, why am I so obsessed with that? That's right.

Speaker 1 We're getting the extended version of the podcast to get all of your angles onto you.

Speaker 4 Symbolic of, yeah, the choices leaders make. And I've watched leaders for a long time and I see when I think they're making some catastrophic mistakes.
And I think this is up there, right?

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 first point, right?

Speaker 4 She's on the right of politics. Are we seriously getting into cancel culture now where we cancel bans? I mean, like, you know,

Speaker 4 seriously, I'm not a fan of that myself. I know different people have different views.
Some people might think it's fine out there. I do not.

Speaker 1 And the right of politics have been the standard bearers for

Speaker 1 culture.

Speaker 4 To me, it's contradictory to their broader libertarian kind of vibe.

Speaker 1 First thing.

Speaker 4 Secondly, yes, what you choose to focus on. And thirdly, politics 101.
let the if this is a bad choice, and I, by the way, am not into him in band t-shirts. Do you realize this?

Speaker 4 This is not some kind of, I want my PM to be in band t-shirts. I don't.
Wear a suit, man. Like, I'm not obsessed with this, but...

Speaker 1 Debatable.

Speaker 1 I think you are, but that's not. Whatever.

Speaker 4 I think... You let the public, as a political strategy, mock the crap out of him and you keep your hands clean.
Are you with me?

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's for the people to decide.

Speaker 4 You're not touching that. No, you're too, you're too above that.
You're too interested in jobs and inflation. You're a serious player.
And I think it trivialises her. Don't you as well?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 And to anyone who might think that it's like low rent, not only to have said it, but to maybe interpret it as being part of a broader picture, don't forget it comes a week after some backflipping or confusion around her decision to call for Kevin Rudd to be sacked as our ambassador to the US at a moment when many of her colleagues felt that it should have been a Team Australia moment.

Speaker 2 She does not have a commanding majority in her party room, that she is hemorrhaging members of her shadow ministry. All of these factors accumulate to a point.

Speaker 2 I definitely don't think we're at a Knights and Dames situation.

Speaker 1 This isn't the straw that broke the camel's back, but maybe it's another.

Speaker 2 The arc is curving. And it may be something you look back on in six months, 12 months and go, well, that was when things things started to accelerate.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 4 I don't think it's Knights and Dames. Knights and Dames, for those who don't remember, was, of course,

Speaker 1 Tony Abbott's decision to reinstate the awarding of Knighthoods and Dameships. Would you call it a dameship? I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 Knighthoods and Dameships are from Australia, which was a captain's call that went down.

Speaker 4 He was Prime Minister at the time, so he actually had power.

Speaker 1 He was hard to do it. All right.
So we've talked about this in context of the many other issues that the opposition could be and should be focusing on at this point.

Speaker 1 I think one that has really affected a lot of Australians personally in the last couple of days has been the Bureau of Meteorology website.

Speaker 1 And who would have known that a website update would have such wide-reaching impacts?

Speaker 1 But the bombs bomb has been a very serious issue for people who need and require information and need that information to be easily accessible.

Speaker 1 We've seen Murray Watt, very busy this week with the environment reforms, also have to haul in the CEO of the Bureau of Meteorology and say, what is going on with this update?

Speaker 1 You need to make changes and you need to make them as quickly as possible. Claire, is this just an issue for the bomb or is this an issue for the government too?

Speaker 2 I think at the moment it's definitely an issue for the bomb. They're a fairly well-known entity in the country.
I don't think they're particularly associated as being partisan.

Speaker 2 Obviously they are very much not.

Speaker 2 And the fact that the bomb communicates quite directly with the public, everyone would hear meteorologists from the agency on TV and radio and things all the time. Obviously, they have the app.

Speaker 2 A lot of people use the website. It's definitely a problem for them.
I must admit, I'm not a regular user of the app.

Speaker 2 I just risk it.

Speaker 1 I'm the one that gets caught in the rain all the time without an umbrella. But

Speaker 2 some of the things that we're talking about here, they are really serious. Like

Speaker 2 something I learned today was they're not showing showing when hail is going to be part of a storm and I mean I own a car that has previously been destroyed by hail that is a piece of information if I saw a storm cell tracking toward where I was parked that is a piece of information I think I would like to have and that's just a very everyday example imagine if you are a farmer or have some or a fisherman

Speaker 1 there was a good example I think that David Littleproud put forward from one of his constituents who has a farming property which has a lot of land that gets inundated at times of high rainfall and that farmer now can't locate themselves on the map using GPS coordinates which is important if you have a regional property that's not necessarily near a town

Speaker 1 or that a postcode is so broad that it gives you an area that's too difficult to really discern what it means for you locally and said that this farmer now says it's too hard to get information at short notice about what the river level changes might be and that's what he's using to calculate whether his paddocks are going to go under and you're making decisions about do I need to move stock Do I need to move equipment?

Speaker 1 And that information is now either not there or too hard to access in a reasonable way. So there's a really serious direct consequences that come from this.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so the government obviously has made it clear that they're not happy. Also to distance themselves, like this isn't us, this is them, and we want them to fix it and

Speaker 4 watch this space. Look, let's just end the podcast on what is the biggest story in the world.
It will break a little later.

Speaker 1 It's not a t-shirt game, okay?

Speaker 4 Well, that is the thing that...

Speaker 1 Mel?

Speaker 4 I shouldn't shouldn't have poked the bear i shouldn't i take it back i'm gonna stop poking the bears on tipping wait one question before we get to trump and she have you listened to the album have you no okay you haven't listened to the album well i probably know the songs and just don't realize that it's love will tear us apart again like it's it's it's an iconic you need to be in a particular mood though that's right so the meeting united states president donald trump um and and president xi jinping meeting in what is really a high stakes meeting right these are the two biggest leaders in the world.

Speaker 4 Fair?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, it puts Albo's meeting with Trump last week in rather a different context.

Speaker 4 It does, but, you know, we were happy with that as a sort of middle power. Like, let's, you know, we're doing our work.

Speaker 4 But I do think actually the Prime Minister's interaction so positive again on camera with Donald Trump is just the ultimate payback from him.

Speaker 10 You came all the way and now you came here, but this isn't quite as far.

Speaker 10 This time I traveled far. But you've done a fantastic job.
We're working together on rare earths, but we're working on a lot of things together, and it's all working out very well.

Speaker 4 For ages, he's been dogged by questions about this relationship, and now all of a sudden they're BFFs on camera constantly.

Speaker 1 They've had a meeting on the sidelines,

Speaker 1 the White House meeting, now he's been invited to the dinner. I mean, the opposition's argument that he's not getting FaceTime with the president has now been well informed.

Speaker 4 Honestly, people are going to start talking about these two.

Speaker 1 And what's happening between Trump and Jeeves. So I think there are two things we should look out for here

Speaker 1 the key thing we need to look out for is what resolution can the us and china come to on tariffs and that is caught up in critical minerals so will china back down on some of its blockade provisions it had put in place around where it will export its critical minerals and will the us back down on the level of tariffs that it is imposing as a sign of its displeasure on that can they both walk back from the precipice on that?

Speaker 1 I think we can expect to see that because in previous cases where the

Speaker 1 tit-for-tat tariffs had escalated between the US and China, they had managed to wind it back. So I think there is a proven pathway that they can de-escalate.

Speaker 1 But that's really important for Australia because if we continue to get this tariff and trade barriers between China and the US, if that were to impact China's economic growth or if it impacts inflation in the US, both of those things have flow-on impacts to the Australian economy that are probably more significant than anything that the direct Australia-US relationship would conduct.

Speaker 1 That's really what we should be looking out for from this meeting.

Speaker 4 Look, it's a deeply consequential meeting.

Speaker 4 Look, my own take, when I'm saying this, it might be cancelled within a couple of hours of people listening, but is that, you know, Trump, Trump talks a big game, but he also taco Trump.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he does chicken out, right? And he also

Speaker 4 likes, he likes powerful people. He likes authoritarians.
This is a guy that he kind of

Speaker 4 wants to be friendly with.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think also you just can't underestimate the

Speaker 2 value that he puts on the perception of having made a deal.

Speaker 2 I think back to things like the way that he celebrated from the rooftops getting US beef into Australia as if he had orchestrated this amazing deal when really it was just a long-running kind of internal, very bland department process.

Speaker 1 And we don't really buy much of this in the US anyway. Correct.

Speaker 2 He is not going to walk away from a meeting with Xi Jinping without some way of framing it as having achieved a result.

Speaker 2 And that is partly why he gets this reputation for chickening out on threats because when it comes to that crunch, the deal is more important than the threat to him. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 4 Well, watch that space. That's happening later.
We're recording this on a Thursday. Can I say, Claire, so happy to have you in the, what did I call it, the ABC family.

Speaker 4 Whatever role you're taking, I'm enjoying it. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 7 Questions without notice. Are there any questions?

Speaker 5 Members on my route.

Speaker 7 The Prime Minister has the call.

Speaker 5 Thanks very much, Mr. Speaker.

Speaker 7 Well, then I give the call to the Honourable, the Leader of the Opposition.

Speaker 6 Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Prime Minister.

Speaker 4 The bells are ringing. That means it's time for question time.
And this week's question comes from Josh.

Speaker 11 Hi, Party Room. Josh here from Warwander Country in Melbourne.
I heard on the podcast recently the current Labor government referred referred to as progressive and left of centre.

Speaker 11 But when I look at their stance on immigration, coal and gas approvals, anti-protest laws, and banning social media for young people, I'm not sure that label fits anymore.

Speaker 11 I'm young, sure, so I didn't live through the Labour Party of Whitlam or Hawke. But it sometimes feels like genuinely progressive perspectives don't get much coverage in the media now.

Speaker 11 What do you think? Has the Overton window shifted or am I too young to get it? Thank you. Love the podcast.

Speaker 4 Oh, that's a really interesting question. Are they really progressive when you look at issues and their stance on immigration, coal? Really interesting point.

Speaker 4 Well, well. I mean, they're more, you know, what is progressive, it's all on a, it's like a spectrum, isn't it?

Speaker 1 It's also relative.

Speaker 4 That's what I mean, like it's compared to the last guys.

Speaker 1 We can talk about a neutral spectrum internationally,

Speaker 1 but really most of the time we're talking about the Labor Party in comparison to the Coalition, because that is the main contest when it comes to Australian politics, is who is going to form government.

Speaker 1 So I think part of it is just relative to the coalition it is. But I think it also comes from a bit of a tradition of

Speaker 1 a long-term focus of difference between the Labor and the coalition has been on economic issues and Labor's focus on Labor versus capital is, I think, one of the sort of traditional markers of progressivism

Speaker 1 on the more objective political spectrum. And so, I think historically, we would look to that to describe Labour.

Speaker 1 And I think the view of that was also challenged at a time when Labour moved further to the right and focused on a lot of economic reforms that were considered

Speaker 1 not necessarily in tradition of the Labour Party. But again, I just come back to, I I think it's very much a question of relativity to the main opponent.
100%.

Speaker 4 But, you know, your point about some of those issues. I think Albanese has...

Speaker 4 has a really, really sharp political radar and he knows that you need to be sort of at the centre and on things like immigration. I mean, you know, whether people like it or not.

Speaker 1 He's been on a journey on that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but whether people like it or not, like, you know, Australians overwhelmingly had issues with boat arrivals and you see this kind of tension around the world.

Speaker 4 John Howard's, and you could hear actually Anthony Green explain this, that really neutralised the issue of arrivals when there was a bipartisanship on it.

Speaker 4 So the left may not like it, and I think that's why some people vote Green, if you look at the asylum seeker debates of the past, and I covered them heavily, but ultimately, you know, Labor is where the mainstream is on this.

Speaker 1 And I also think it's really interesting, I'm just going to throw back a very old reference here, but you will remember PK because you would have been reporting like me when Lindsay Tanner was still in Parliament.

Speaker 1 And when he wrote his memoir when he finished his political career, he was reflecting that if he had been if he was a young man at university today he'd be a member of the Greens.

Speaker 1 He said the sort of things that he stood for and believed and the values that he held particularly as a left factional member of the Labor Party, that was space that was really only there for the Labor Party back several decades ago.

Speaker 1 We have a more diverse political playing field, for want of a better term, today.

Speaker 1 So I find that reflection when we're considering, well, how progressive is Labor, how much of the political spectrum does it encompass.

Speaker 1 I think there are different views about what room there is for it and where people sit.

Speaker 4 Send your questions in. We do love getting them.
You send them to the partyroom at abc.net.au.

Speaker 1 And remember to follow Politics Now on the ABC Listen app. That way you will never miss an episode.

Speaker 4 That's it for the party room this week.

Speaker 1 But David Spears is going to be back for another episode of Insiders on Background on Saturday.

Speaker 1 He's speaking to Ken Henry, and Ken Henry has been pushing very hard for reform on the environmental laws. So I'm super interested to hear that.

Speaker 1 And if you haven't already, go back and listen to your episode with Anthony Greene. It was wonderful.

Speaker 1 Anthony Greene going into the depths of the history of One Nation and how its political popularity and fortunes have sort of risen and fallen over time.

Speaker 1 So that's worth going back and having a listen to as well. And of course, PK, you'll start afresh on Monday with

Speaker 4 starting afresh. Thank you for describing it that way.
It's every day is a new day. Look, there's also tickets on sale for our Canberra Live show in December.
Links in the show notes. Email.

Speaker 1 See you, PK.