Australia's Multicultural Failure; House Price Fall; Tony's Trip North — Australia’s Future S5E12

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: There is diversity in our country, always has been, always will be. The point is we're all on a shared journey together and the objective of everyone in this country should be to build a stronger Australia and to cherish our core Anglo-Keldic culture and our fundamental Judeo-Christian ethos which is what's made this country so successful and indeed so attractive. [00:00:30] Speaker 2: The Australian way of life is under threat like never before. Sectarian violence is rife on our streets. The political class is silencing mainstream Australians under the guise of hate speech and the media, universities and major civic organisations continue to fan the flames of division. Australia is without leadership and Australians are losing hope. 2026 will be the year that defines the future of our great nation. Are we up to the task? [00:00:58] Speaker 3: Hello Tony and g'day to all of our viewers and listeners. Great to be back. Today Tony will be sharing his insights on his latest trip to East Arnhem Land, his perspectives on multiculturalism, declining house prices, the change to premiership in Victoria and Tony will share a special update about the presidency of the Federal Liberal Party. Tony, great to be back with you. [00:01:18] Speaker 1: Thanks Dan, good to be here in person. [00:01:20] Speaker 3: It's fantastic and great that you made it back from East Arnhem Land in one piece. So you've been up there for six days I think it was and of course throughout your time in politics you made a point of travelling to remote Indigenous communities and you've published this on your sub stack and I would recommend everyone sign up to your sub stack to read your latest missives and I didn't know this but I learned that you have spent time doing some real blue-collar work as a builder's assistant, a truancy assistant, a teacher's aide and getting involved in actual hands-on work in some of these remote communities. So tell us a little bit about what took you there on this occasion and then maybe we'll fill out the backstory of what you've done in the past. [00:02:01] Speaker 1: Well thanks Dan. As Timmy Jawa Barangawonga said of me last week, he said Tony Abbott is a real working-class man because he gets his hands dirty and I was more than happy to do that because what's happening up there at the moment Dan, through Nova Paris' foundation and with the support of a local charity, ISRAID, there's a water project going in that'll take about four weeks to improve the water infrastructure. But there's a lot of things that need to be done in the Barwicker community. As is so typical about so much of remote Australia, the water infrastructure is going to be improved to sustain a significant expansion of the tourism precinct there. Barwicker which is about an hour's drive south of Newland Boy, which is the service centre for the big Gove mine. Barwicker is an absolutely iconic spot. If you want to spend a couple of days away from it all relaxing, if you're prepared to accept that it's not five star, it is just magic, absolutely magical. So they need to upgrade the tourist infrastructure, they need better water, they need more reliable power, they need to upgrade the sewerage system, the waste management system. Above all else they need to upgrade road access because at the moment, the last four or five kilometres getting into Barwicker is a drive along the beach. Now, if you are an experienced four-wheel driver with a decent vehicle, it shouldn't be a problem. But not everyone has a decent four-wheel drive and not everyone is an experienced off-road driver. And there were at least a couple of cars coming into Barwicker which got bogged while I was there and had to be helped out. So these are things that need to happen as quickly as possible if the economics and the prosperity of the people of East Arnhem Land are to improve. Now, for a long time, the mainstay of East Arnhem Land's economy has been the big Rio Tinto mine at Gove. That's slated to close in the next few years. And without mining, tourism is going to have to be the mainstay. So, uh, uh, Timmy Jawaparawunga is the traditional owner at Bowaka, part of the Gumatch clan, which was, uh, uh, the, uh, you know, Pingoo clan. And, and he's really keen, uh, to see, uh, more cabins, more camping, uh, and that's the work that I was helping to do last week with Nova Paris, uh, with, uh, uh, the people from Israel, uh, and with members of Timmy's extended family. Uh, we were putting in bush showers. Uh, we were clearing land for new water tanks to go in. Uh, we were digging the ditches for the piping to be installed because if the piping's above ground and, uh, there's burning going on, you can often lose your water and that's not exactly, uh, optimal. So, um, it was good hands-on work. And I've got to say, and even though it was the dry season, it could be a bit humid and once you get into the tropical bush, you've got to do battle with creepers, with green ants, et cetera. But there are a few things more satisfying than working with your hands in a good cause where at the end of every day, you can see the results of your work. [00:05:58] Speaker 3: Mm. Did you get many questions about politics or people are mostly immersed in their own actual [00:06:05] Speaker 1: practical lives? Well, that's a, that's a very good point that you make implicitly Dan. I mean, Nova and I obviously talked a bit of politics because, uh, we're both former members of parliament, but, uh, Timmy, uh, and his folk, they weren't interested in politics at all. They just wanted things to work better in their community. And as we know, remote Australia is totally bedeviled by politics. You've got, uh, uh, federal territory and local government. Uh, you got all these different departments often not talking to each other, uh, often with different priorities. Then of course, there's the local indigenous politics and the land council politics. And because most of the people, the Aboriginal people in remote Australia don't have access to private finance, getting anything done invariably requires government funding and navigating your way through all of these different levels of government, different departments and different land councils, even for very shrewd and skillful people can be incredibly difficult. And one of the things that I am in the process of doing today, Dan, is, is appealing, uh, to the federal infrastructure minister to cut through some of this bureaucracy because money has been allocated, uh, to finish the road. Uh, but now it seems they're talking about gold plating the road rather than just building the simple road, which will require little more than a bulldozer, a grater, uh, and a few dozen loads of rock. Um, now that's not going to cost more than a few hundred thousand dollars at the most. Um, talking about millions of dollars to extend the road. Well, okay. If you want to build the super highway of East Arnhem Land, maybe, but this just has to be a road that most cars can travel on most of the time instead of getting bogged on the beach. [00:08:14] Speaker 3: Hmm. And your practice of going out to indigenous communities, this goes back to 2008, am I right? When you were shadow indigenous affairs minister? Dan, it really goes back to 1994 when I was a new [00:08:26] Speaker 1: member of parliament. Um, obviously as a, uh, political spectator and staffer, I was conscious of the needs of indigenous Australia. And then I became a member of parliament and suppose it was, uh, on me along with others to try to fix these problems. And I figured that, uh, much and all as I'd read, I, I didn't think I'd actually sat down at any length with a single Aboriginal person. I'd never been in any Aboriginal community. And I thought back then 30 years ago now that that needed to change for me and for others. So ever since I've tried to spend as much time as I could in remote Australia, uh, as a minister in the Howard government, it tended to be, um, flitting from community to community, uh, particularly when I had whole of government responsibility for Cape York as employment minister and the APY lands in South Australia as health minister. Um, after the Howard government was defeated, I was then made shadow minister for amongst other things, indigenous affairs. It was then that I called Noel Pearson, uh, back in the day when Noel and I were, uh, on better terms than we have more recently become over the voice. And I said to Noel, look, would you be prepared to sponsor longer trips, uh, to remote Australia where I could be more than a glorified tourist, I could actually do something useful. And so in 2009, I was a, uh, assistant with truancy in our Accurne. The previous year I'd helped as a teacher's aide in Cohen for three weeks. Uh, I then did things like, uh, help with the, the, the Bush Builder program, uh, in Hopevale, um, along with a group of business leaders. I helped to, uh, refurbish the school library at Accurne. Uh, then as you might remember Dan in 2014 and 2015, uh, most of the government went bush for a week each year, first to East Arnhem Land and then to the Torres Strait, because I figured that if Aboriginal people are, let's say, uh, 3% of the population, uh, why shouldn't a week every year, uh, be spent, not just focused on Aboriginal affairs, but located in remote Australia. And then afterwards, uh, I went, uh, to the East Kimberleys for a couple of years with Ian Trust. I'd hoped to continue, but first COVID, then the voice debate, uh, then, uh, a local problem in Alice Springs meant that this is the first time since 2018, uh, that I've been in remote Australia for a week. And I've promised, uh, Timmy Jawa and Nova Paris that I want to go back to Boaca, uh, for the next few years to try to ensure that these important local projects actually get finished because there's nothing like being present on the ground, uh, to make sure that things actually change for the better. [00:11:41] Speaker 3: Hmm. Oh, very, very interesting. Thank you for sharing that with us and, um, yeah, keep us updated on future movements that you do there with the infrastructure. [00:11:49] Speaker 1: And Dan, any of our listeners who would like to get to know our country better, I would encourage them to, uh, to take off to remote Australia. Um, a couple of days, uh, we were joined, uh, on the job by, uh, uh, uh, terrific bloke who, uh, was a plumber from near Perth who was with his family and had discovered, uh, that, uh, Boaca was one of the beauty spots of East Arnhem land gone. And when he saw that we were doing this, uh, construction work, he simply said, well, I can't just lie on the beach, uh, enjoying myself while you guys are working, uh, come and eat. He came to help. And I suspect that, uh, one of the highlights of his holiday is going to be, uh, um, helping out in Boaca with a whole lot of locals and a former prime minister. [00:12:48] Speaker 3: There you go. All right. Let's talk about the sort of the issue du jour at the moment nationally, which is immigration. The debate continues. And, uh, the latest, I guess, inflection point has been, uh, former prime minister, John Howard's intervention in the debate. He gave some comments and wrote an article recently for the Australian where he was critical of both multiculturalism and monoculturalism, which is Senator Hanson's, uh, description of her preferred scheme, if you like. Uh, what John Howard said was that voters overwhelmingly support migration as long as it is steady, uh, and that the hatreds of foreign lands and cultures are kept out of Australian society. Uh, now I'm sure that's true, but the problem is it hasn't been steady and these foreign hatreds haven't been kept out. Uh, and hence why we've had these rumblings against multiculturalism, which is the overall, uh, I guess governing ideology since at least the Whitlam era. Now, I think plainly whatever you want to call the current system, it isn't working, uh, and it's encouraging us to be divided and plainly the government is not interested whatsoever in, in managing this. So just interested in your perspective on this matter on the back of, um, John Howard's perspective. [00:14:01] Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, and Dan, this is actually a subject that I cover in the last couple of chapters of my recently published history. Uh, and I make a distinction between the initial post-war migration where everyone was referred to as a new Australian. Yeah. The idea being, uh, you've come to Australia. We want you to be as Australian as quickly as possible to integrate from day one and then to assimilate, uh, as quickly as you could. And, and the subsequent period, which has been dominated by this imported ideology of multiculturalism. Now, you know, if multiculturalism simply means that you, uh, become Australian in your own way and at your own pace, fair enough. But in the hands of the green left establishment, multiculturalism has often meant effectively ethnic separatism. It's often meant official encouragement to people, not so much to see themselves as Australians, but as whatever their form of nationality was living in Australia. And this is why the terminology that I've been using for the last few years is, uh, that, that we all need to be part of team Australia, as opposed to just living in hotel Australia and taking advantage of the facility. So look, um, hard multiculturalism is failing. There's no doubt about that. And if we want evidence of that, we need look no further than the Bondi massacre. I mean, what could have been more abhorrent by traditional Australian values than two individuals, uh, one born here, uh, one living here for almost 30 years, but, uh, plainly not assimilating our values, uh, pulling out a stack of guns and turning one of our most iconic national places into a shooting gallery. I mean, utterly, utterly vicious, abhorrent, evil. And frankly, the response to, to the Bondi massacre by representatives of the Australian Muslim community was quite disturbing because instead of saying that this is an Australian, that, uh, Islam utterly repudiates this death to the infidels mindset, uh, their almost instant reaction was, uh, uh, to start, uh, worrying about Islamophobia. Well, I mean, we should be worried, uh, about a death to the infidels mindset. We should be worried, uh, about people in this country who subscribe to a global caliphate and Sharia law because these things frankly are inconsistent with the Australian way of life and the continuance of our democratic ideals and the freedoms that, uh, hitherto in this country, we've always cherished. And so there is a debate that needs to be had, uh, and the resolution of it has got to be much more stress on our unity and much less stress on our diversity. I, I absolutely accept that from the beginning, modern Australia has been in a sense, I, a diverse community. I mean, there were the Aboriginal people, obviously, and it makes the settlers, there were the English, the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh, um, and subsequently people from all over the world. So sure, uh, there is diversity in our country. Always has been, always will be. But the point is we're all on a shared journey together. And the objective of everyone in this country, including those who've come to this country, should be to build a stronger Australia and to cherish our core Anglo-Celtic culture and our fundamental Judeo-Christian ethos, which is what's made this country so successful and indeed so attractive. [00:18:31] Speaker 3: And I think some of the, um, discontent with multiculturalism is often prompted by that exact issue, which is elements of Islam. That seems to be the real challenge here. And I think in our society, many people are still scared and don't feel comfortable talking about that facts because of political correctness and the way in which you get portrayed. But is this whole conversation about multiculturalism and monoculturalism a long-winded way of avoiding talking about that particular topic, [00:19:00] Speaker 1: do you think? Well, the last thing any of us who want to do is to make decent Australians who happen to be Muslims, uh, feel in some way unwelcome. Um, we rightly welcome people of all races and all religions, but there is certainly a form of political Islam, if you like, which is deeply problematic in a liberal democracy like ours. I mean, any death to the infidels mindset, uh, any commitment to a global caliphate, or to a privileged place for any particular religion is deeply problematic. And I think that needs to be [00:19:45] Speaker 3: absolutely understood. I think it's pretty clear that we need, we do need another expression and another policy and you've said Team Australia, which I think is, is perfectly fine because we had new Australians and we've had sort of, I would say, I've heard it described really as sort of a form of benign multiculturalism and then an active form, which is what we have now, which is government, whether it's government programs or, uh, through politics, specifically encouraging people to be separate, which is where we are now. And funding separateness. Exactly. All various programs. Uh, and, um, we now need something different and I would give Senator Hanson credit for having a crack at describing a different term, which some people like, some people don't. Now, whether that sticks or not, I don't know, but plainly we, I think it's just obvious we have to move to something [00:20:30] Speaker 1: categorically different. And look, let's give, first of all, John Howard credit, because, you know, it was John Howard who constantly said back in his time as prime minister, that the things that unite us as Australians should always be far more significant than anything that divides us. It was John Howard who I think changed the, the title of the department from immigration and multiculturalism to immigration and citizenship. Now I'm sure that subsequent Labour governments changed it back. But nevertheless, it was really John Howard, uh, in his time who I think first raised important questions about multiculturalism and important skepticism about, um, hard, if you like, multiculturalism. Now in more recent times, others have raised it. Angus Taylor, let's give Angus credit. Uh, he has been saying since the day he became leader that, um, the problem with immigration at the present time under the current government is that the numbers are too high and the quality is too low. And he stressed that everyone who comes to this country has got to actively embrace Australian values. And yes, we are perfectly entitled to to discriminate on the basis of values in our immigration program. Uh, we would not have a citizenship test, uh, if we didn't think that it was important, uh, to insist upon an understanding of Australian values. We wouldn't ask people to take a citizenship oath, which commits them, uh, to, uh, Australia and its people whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey. I mean, these are the words that every Australian citizen, every new color to Australia who becomes a citizen, these are the words that they, that they, that they swear by. And it's not enough just to mouth the words, you've got to lean them and live them. And unfortunately, a small minority, uh, of, uh, of recent citizens and some of the people who are living here don't really subscribe to those words. [00:22:49] Speaker 3: So do us a favor, hit subscribe and you won't miss any of the action. While you're at it, head to ipa.org.au, follow the prompts to subscribe to the IPA's website. So that way you'll find all of our research and analysis. Now back to the chat. All right. Let's go to the other issue, which is actually related to immigration is, uh, house prices and I've had, uh, the changes to capital gains tax that are gearing. And we've seen house prices come off, certainly in, uh, Melbourne or in Melbourne, they'd be coming off for a few years now in large part also because of the state government, uh, policies, uh, in Victoria and then also in Sydney. And now it seems to be going elsewhere as well. So, uh, we had a chat about this a couple of months ago, just keen to get your assessment of where it stands now. This seems to be continuing, um, at least for the time being. So what, what does this say about the broader economic implications of this potentially? [00:23:49] Speaker 1: Well, we do have to understand, um, the vast majority of Australians wealth is tied up in their house. I mean, at least 90% of Australians, uh, have little in the way of substantial assets beyond their house. And maybe a rental property, uh, if they, uh, are, uh, are, uh, are successful, unfortunate and if for argument's sake, house prices fall by 5%, uh, and your house is for argument's sake worth one and a half million dollars, which is about the average price in Sydney. Um, well, that's a $75,000 loss that you have sustained. Now you only realize the loss if you, uh, have to sell, but no one should be under any illusions. If house prices fall, uh, your asset, uh, value has decreased. And that has all sorts of knock on impacts. It means that you can't borrow as much if you need to, uh, uh, it means that if you've got to sell, uh, you will crystallize a loss. Um, if you're a recent buyer, uh, and the housing market falls, particularly if you've only, uh, put, put up a 5% deposit, you could suddenly find yourself, uh, owing more than your house is worth negative equity. So, so this is, this is very serious and, um, I've found myself saying often enough in the past that, uh, the one thing worse than house prices rising is house prices falling. Um, because, uh, most of us, uh, are actually, uh, already homeowners or home buyers. Um, we are by far the majority of people and we should not be penalized by government policy, which is my next point, Dan. Um, what, why are prices, uh, sliding dramatically? They are sliding dramatically precisely because of the policies of the Albanese government. Um, if you put more taxes on property, uh, there will be less investment in property. Um, that means there will be less demand for houses. That means prices will fall, um, and by, uh, increasing the taxes on property, which is what ending negative gearing for investment properties has done. By increasing taxes on property, you will decrease the value of property. Likewise, by increasing the taxes on investment, which is what the capital gains tax changes mean, you will get less investment. And if you have less investment, you will get less prosperity. Now you add to these latest, uh, utterly misguided and wrong headed tax changes. You add to that, uh, the government's, uh, self harming energy policies. And you add to that the government's productivity killing workplace relations policies. And you've got a government, which is forcing our economy into long-term structural decline. And, and this is terrible, terrible. I mean, this is why Angus Taylor quite rightly says that the policies of this government have set the country on an economic doom loop, an economic doom loop. And unless this government radically changes its mind, which is almost inconceivable, the only way we can get out of this long-term downward spiral is by changing the government and changing the government as quickly as possible. [00:27:42] Speaker 3: The other thing is probably the spending, which is putting up pressure on interest rates, which is also driving down confidence in housing. I certainly agree with you with people that have just bought a house, particularly those that were sort of lured into the government's deposit scheme, who are absolutely getting hammered by that. I think it's hard to have a lot of sympathy for someone who bought a house at say 500 grand. It went to 1.5 and now it's 1.4. I mean, I, I really think that you've, you've sat on the house. Um, it's not really through your own doing that that house is appreciated in value. Sure. I accept you may put in renovations and some works into that and, and fair enough. But I think the issue here is a couple of things. One is the people that have just bought who are getting potentially hammered by that, often younger people. I think also the second thing is, I just think it's the case that our economy is too dependent on housing and also superannuation. That's not a reason to pull the rug from under people, but there does have to be a transition in our economy because I think what you're saying is right. The house is the biggest asset, but for so many people to be so dependent upon ever increasing wealth in their house through no fault of their own, through the structure of our economy means our economy is very vulnerable. So I just think, yes, it's, you want, if you own a house, you want your prices to go up, but I don't think it was sustainable for the longterm, for the next generation, for the other things I've mentioned. [00:29:05] Speaker 1: Well, you make some good points, Dan, but again, let's think about economic policy over the last couple of decades, particularly in the post-GFC era of quantitative easing or money printing. That has inflated asset values while at the same time corroding productivity. And that is part of the problem that we've got. I mean, over the last decade or so productivity is basically flat lined, particularly since 2022 with the current government and the self-harming energy policy and the backward looking industrial policy. But when you've got productivity flat lining, uh, when you've got government spending, uh, when you've got essentially, uh, money printing, uh, by central banks to sustain government, government, government spending, you, you get weakness in the general economy coupled with massive asset prices, price inflation. Um, so, so there's a lot that needs to change. Uh, and again, the answer is not shoving band-aids on bullet wounds. The answer is reversing, uh, the workplace relations change, relations changes of this government. Uh, it's putting urgently into place a sensible energy policy and it's then, I suppose, trying to minimize tax to minimize regulation, uh, and maximize investment. Uh, that's what you need. And, and look, um, for many years, uh, housing was becoming more affordable. Uh, it's really only in the last couple of decades since the GFC that we've seen, um, I suppose, enormous changes in the ability of average earners to be able to afford a house. I mean, um, the, uh, the multiple of average weekly earnings required to buy a house in Sydney has gone from about five to at least 10, uh, over the last couple of decades. And, and this is what we need. We need to change. And we don't change that by, by overtaxing the economy. We change that by getting the fundamentals right. [00:31:40] Speaker 3: And, and Victoria is probably an exemplar of all of the things that you've described. It's been turbocharged in Victoria and there's been a change to the premiership. Now we've got Ben Carroll, uh, having dispensed with Jacinta Allen, having previously said that, uh, he would look her in the eye and not do that. But apparently his daughter gave him different advice this time. Now it's okay to roll the premier, but a couple of weeks ago it wasn't. Uh, but anyway, he's obviously very aware of, uh, the negative association of Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allen. And he's gone to some lengths to distance himself from that, uh, including calling a Royal Commission into the building corruption, including. [00:32:18] Speaker 1: He hasn't actually called the Royal Commission. [00:32:20] Speaker 3: He's promised one. Promised one. Fair point. Uh, he's seems to be pulling a back a bit on the suburban rail loop by not appointing a minister for that project. However, I doubt that they will not proceed with that given how much they've sunk into it and the political benefits they probably get. So, but clearly he's trying to differentiate himself. The question that I sort of have is how many, how many voters will fall for it? How many people will think he's actually, I mean, he was there. Of course, he was there. [00:32:44] Speaker 1: For all of it. Absolutely right. [00:32:46] Speaker 3: And maybe as a person, maybe he is different. Uh, but what matters is what you've done when you have positions of power and authority. And he not once ever publicly stood up to Andrews or Allen. [00:32:55] Speaker 1: Completely correct, Dan. Um, uh, his first words, other than saying, I'm not Dan Andrews and I'm not Jacinda Allen is, uh, integrity will not be optional in my government. Well, that's an implicit admission that integrity was absent in the previous government. And he was sitting at the cabinet table for nearly the whole time. Now, if he was aware of failings of integrity, uh, failings of, uh, of honesty, such as the fact that $15 billion, it seems may have been siphoned off, uh, by organized crime, uh, under the so-called big build program. If he was aware of all these things and he must have suspected, uh, he must have read the newspapers. Why didn't he stand up, uh, to Andrews and Allen? Um, it would be a lot easier to believe that, uh, Ben Carroll is different if at some point in time he'd resigned from the previous government, but plainly he never did. Look, um, as an Australian, I want Victoria to succeed, uh, with every new premier and with every new government, regardless of whether you voted for it, uh, you want it to be successful as an Australian patriot. But, um, as someone said the other night, uh, you can change the leader, but you can't change labor. And that's the problem. That's the problem. That's the problem. Even with people like, um, Chris Minns in New South Wales, who's a palpably decent bloke. Mm. And with Peter Malinowskis in South Australia, who people say is a very good guy, they're still constrained by the Labor Party. [00:34:44] Speaker ?: Yeah. [00:34:44] Speaker 1: And, uh, much as the old Labor Party of Ben Chifley, uh, much as the Labor Party of Hawke and Keating had a lot going for it. It's so different today. Mm. The green left has taken the place over, which is why the policies of contemporary Labor governments are so radically different, uh, from those of the whole Keating era. Well, you make a good point. [00:35:09] Speaker 3: It's not just, um, they're constrained by the Labor Party, but as you allude to, they're constrained by the left of the Labor Party. I mean, look at South Australia that I'm most familiar with. I mean, they're going ahead with a voice. They've still got a voice to parliament in place to spot a two thirds no vote in that state. Uh, they put money in the most recent budget to turbocharge a treaty process, specifically pointing out the Victorian example. I mean, this stuff's absolutely nuts. Uh, and they're not held to account in any meaningful way. Chris Minns is, I think the same. He's a net zero zealot. Uh, there is a treaty process of some kind underway. Now I understand they put that on the back burner, but yes. I mean, these, they're probably good people to maybe the least bad people to be running it, but you judge a, uh, you judge a tree by the fruit that it bears. And a lot of the fruit is, is rotten. Correct. That's coming out of both states. So. [00:35:56] Speaker 1: Completely correct, Dan. And, uh, Ben Carroll has not promised to do anything, uh, to stop this whole treaty process. And if, uh, what's currently underway, uh, to, um, create this whole Aboriginal apparatus, uh, and governmental infrastructure goes ahead. Well, I'm getting anything done in Victoria will become almost impossible quite apart from the taxes and charges and, uh, all the existing difficulties that business faces. [00:36:29] Speaker 3: All right, well, let's round this out with, uh, a bit of a discussion and your observations as president of the federal liberal party. Um, I know you've mentioned in the past that you were planning a tour around Australia to meet with local branches and to revivify the grassroots of, of the party amongst many other matters. So just interested in an update for how things are going. [00:36:52] Speaker 1: Well, I've certainly got, uh, I I've already started to make a lot of visits to, uh, various groups of liberal party members and supporters. And I think I can report that, uh, they are more desperate than ever for our party to succeed. I can probably also report that they are more anxious than ever about whether our party will succeed. And that's probably because most of them, uh, are very, very concerned that our country is on the wrong track. Um, uh, just desperately on the wrong track. And this is why I keep saying that the best hope of better government in our country is the liberal national coalition. And it's more important than ever that we do get, uh, a better government in this country. Given all the things, the economic stagnation, the societal fragmentation, the strategic peril, the loss of faith in ourselves, which characterize life under the Albanese government. So, but I do in the end have a message of hope. Uh, and that is that under Angus Taylor, uh, this is a different and better party. And if we can win the next election, it will be a very different and better coalition government next time than last time. Uh, and I think Angus is, uh, refining and crystallizing the message all the time, uh, vote liberal and you'll get lower taxes. You'll get cheaper electricity. You'll get fewer migrants. And we'll put Australia first. That's in a nutshell, the Angus Taylor message. I guess the other thing I'm working on Dan is try to ensure that we've got, uh, a decent pool of good candidates to run in winnable seats at the next election. That we've got the campaign infrastructure in place, uh, to make sure we do much better next time than last time. Um, and I desperately want to see more people join the liberal party. Now I know our party hasn't always put out the welcome mat for new members in the past. Um, I've had any number of people tell me that they tried to join and, um, uh, they were told that they'd have to be vetted and that might take months. Um, or, uh, they'd gone to a local branch meeting and, uh, been looked at with suspicion and, uh, told that they couldn't join that particular branch. Um, things are underway to change that, but it's a long, hard road, but I'm determined that we must go down it for our country's sake. [00:39:44] Speaker 3: Great. All right, well, we'll leave it there. Tony, thanks for the update and the chat and we'll catch up in another couple of weeks. [00:39:49] Speaker 1: I look forward to that very much. [00:39:51] Speaker 3: This is a production of the Centre for the Australian way of life at the Institute of Public Affairs. [00:39:56] Speaker 2: To find out more, visit australia.ipa.org.au.